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A New Automation Chapter Begins
Two years ago, while I worked as a network engineer/consultant, I felt strongly that the industry was ripe for change. In February 2015 I jumped feet-first into the world of network automation by going back to my roots in software development, combining those skills with the lessons I learned from 3 years of network engineering.
I’ve learned a ton in the last 2 years - not just at the day job but by actively participating in the automation and open source communities. I’ve co-authored a network automation book. I’ve released an open source project to facilitate automated and distributed testing of network infrastructure. I’ve spoken publicly about many of these concepts and more.
Despite all this, there’s a lot left to do, and I want to make sure I’m in the best place to help move the industry forward. My goal is and has always been to help the industry at large realize the benefits of automation, and break the preconception that automation is only useful for big web properties like Google and Facebook. Bringing these concepts down to Earth and providing very practical steps to achieve this goal is a huge passion of mine.
Automation isn’t just about running Continue reading
A New Automation Chapter Begins
Two years ago, while I worked as a network engineer/consultant, I felt strongly that the industry was ripe for change. In February 2015 I jumped feet-first into the world of network automation by going back to my roots in software development, combining those skills with the lessons I learned from 3 years of network engineering.
I’ve learned a ton in the last 2 years - not just at the day job but by actively participating in the automation and open source communities. I’ve co-authored a network automation book. I’ve released an open source project to facilitate automated and distributed testing of network infrastructure. I’ve spoken publicly about many of these concepts and more.
Despite all this, there’s a lot left to do, and I want to make sure I’m in the best place to help move the industry forward. My goal is and has always been to help the industry at large realize the benefits of automation, and break the preconception that automation is only useful for big web properties like Google and Facebook. Bringing these concepts down to Earth and providing very practical steps to achieve this goal is a huge passion of mine.
Automation isn’t just about running Continue reading
A New Automation Chapter Begins
Two years ago, while I worked as a network engineer/consultant, I felt strongly that the industry was ripe for change. In February 2015 I jumped feet-first into the world of network automation by going back to my roots in software development, combining those skills with the lessons I learned from 3 years of network engineering. I’ve learned a ton in the last 2 years - not just at the day job but by actively participating in the automation and open source communities.Principles of Automation
Automation is an increasingly interesting topic in pretty much every technology discipline these days. There’s lots of talk about tooling, practices, skill set evolution, and more - but little conversation about fundamentals. What little is published by those actually practicing automation, usually takes the form of source code or technical whitepapers. While these are obviously valuable, they don’t usually cover some of the fundamental basics that could prove useful to the reader who wishes to perform similar things in their own organization, but may have different technical requirements.
I write this post to cover what I’m calling the “Principles of Automation”. I have pondered this topic for a while and I believe I have three principles that cover just about any form of automation you may consider. These principles have nothing to do with technology disciplines, tools, or programming languages - they are fundamental principles that you can adopt regardless of the implementation.
I hope you enjoy.
It’s a bit of a long post, so TL;DR - automation isn’t magic. It isn’t only for the “elite”. Follow these guidelines and you can realize the same value regardless of your scale.
Factorio
Lately I’ve been obsessed with a game called “Factorio”. Continue reading
Principles of Automation
Automation is an increasingly interesting topic in pretty much every technology discipline these days. There’s lots of talk about tooling, practices, skill set evolution, and more - but little conversation about fundamentals. What little is published by those actually practicing automation, usually takes the form of source code or technical whitepapers. While these are obviously valuable, they don’t usually cover some of the fundamental basics that could prove useful to the reader who wishes to perform similar things in their own organization, but may have different technical requirements.
I write this post to cover what I’m calling the “Principles of Automation”. I have pondered this topic for a while and I believe I have three principles that cover just about any form of automation you may consider. These principles have nothing to do with technology disciplines, tools, or programming languages - they are fundamental principles that you can adopt regardless of the implementation.
I hope you enjoy.
It’s a bit of a long post, so TL;DR - automation isn’t magic. It isn’t only for the “elite”. Follow these guidelines and you can realize the same value regardless of your scale.
Factorio
Lately I’ve been obsessed with a game called “Factorio”. Continue reading
ToDD Has Moved!
ToDD has been out in the wild for 6 months, and in that time I’ve been really pleased with it’s growth and adoption. Considering this was just a personal side-project, I’ve been blown away by what it’s doing for my own learning experiences as well as for the network automation pipelines of the various folks that pop onto the slack channel asking questions.
For the last 6 months I’ve hosted ToDD on my personal Github profile. It was a good initial location, becuase there really was no need at the time to do anything further.
However, as of tonight, ToDD’s new permanent location is https://github.com/toddproject/todd. Read on for some reasons for this.
Native Testlets
One of the biggest reasons for creating the “toddproject” organization came about when I started rewriting some of the testlets in Go. These are called native testlets and the intention is that they are packaged alongside ToDD because they’re useful to a very wide percentage of ToDD’s userbase (in the same way the legacy bash testlets were).
For this reason, I created the “toddproject” organization, and once that was done, it made a lot of sense to move ToDD there as well.
Rewriting the legacy Continue reading
ToDD Has Moved!
ToDD has been out in the wild for 6 months, and in that time I’ve been really pleased with it’s growth and adoption. Considering this was just a personal side-project, I’ve been blown away by what it’s doing for my own learning experiences as well as for the network automation pipelines of the various folks that pop onto the slack channel asking questions. For the last 6 months I’ve hosted ToDD on my personal Github profile.The Importance of the Network Software Supply Chain
At Networking Field Day 12, we heard from a number of vendors that offered solutions to some common enterprise network problems, from management, to security, and more.
However, there were a few presentations that didn’t seem directly applicable to the canonical network admin’s day-to-day. This was made clear by some comments by delegates in the room, as well as others tweeting about the presentation.
Accelerating the x86 Data Plane
Intel, for instance, spent a significant amount of time discussing the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), which provides a different way of leveraging CPU resources for fast packet processing.
In their presentation, Intel explained the various ways that they’ve circumvented some of the existing bottlenecks in the Linux kernel, resulting in a big performance increase for applications sending and receiving data on the network. DPDK operates in user space, meaning the traditional overhead associated with copying memory resources between user and kernel space is avoided. In addition, techniques like parallel processing and poll mode drivers (as opposed to the traditional interrupt processing model) means packet processing can be done much more efficiently, resulting in better performance.
This is all great (and as a software nerd, very interesting to me Continue reading
The Importance of the Network Software Supply Chain
At Networking Field Day 12, we heard from a number of vendors that offered solutions to some common enterprise network problems, from management, to security, and more. However, there were a few presentations that didn’t seem directly applicable to the canonical network admin’s day-to-day. This was made clear by some comments by delegates in the room, as well as others tweeting about the presentation. Accelerating the x86 Data Plane Intel, for instance, spent a significant amount of time discussing the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), which provides a different way of leveraging CPU resources for fast packet processing.CS101: Algorithms
First in this series is the subject of Algorithms. This topic is very interesting to me because when I first strived to understand what exactly they were, I was expecting something a lot more complicated than what they turned out to be. I think, shamefully, that Hollywood may have had an influence on this, as the term “algorithm” is one of many terms abused by “cyber” movies and the like, portrayed to be some sort of ultimate cyber weapon in the war against Ellingson Mineral Company.
The reality is much simpler. “Algorithm” is defined as “a set of steps that are followed in order to solve a mathematical problem or to complete a computer process”. It really is that simple. Think of a mathematical problem that you’d need to solve yourself (ignoring for the moment that there’s likely a 3rd party library that has already done this).
A common example is the calculation of the Fibonacci sequence. Forget about writing code for a minute, and think about the problem in plain English. Given a starting sequence (1, 1), how do you continue calculating and adding numbers to this sequence, to produce N number of Fibonacci numbers?
- Get the last two Continue reading
New Series: CS 101
Historically, my background is far closer to the systems side of things, but as I’ve picked up software development experience over the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate the fundamentals of computer science that others in my shoes may not have been exposed to. That said, I have been working on a pseudo-formal blog series on computer science fundamentals.
These fundamentals have a wide variety of applications. Those with more of an IT-focused background will learn that even if you don’t use graph theory, or optimize algorithms in your day job, many of these concepts are at the crux of many of the technologies that we use every day. If, like me, you’ve become bored with the endless cycle of IT certifications, learning these concepts could be a great addition to your skill set, as you can leverage these concepts to extrapolate details from some of the “closed” products we use from IT vendors.
Finally, it’s important to remember that the most important part of any of this is how this knowledge is applied. As you read the posts that I’ll release in the next few weeks, remember that understanding how to optimize a piece of code is useful, Continue reading
CS101: Algorithms
First in this series is the subject of Algorithms. This topic is very interesting to me because when I first strived to understand what exactly they were, I was expecting something a lot more complicated than what they turned out to be. I think, shamefully, that Hollywood may have had an influence on this, as the term “algorithm” is one of many terms abused by “cyber” movies and the like, portrayed to be some sort of ultimate cyber weapon in the war against Ellingson Mineral Company.New Series: CS 101
Historically, my background is far closer to the systems side of things, but as I’ve picked up software development experience over the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate the fundamentals of computer science that others in my shoes may not have been exposed to. That said, I have been working on a pseudo-formal blog series on computer science fundamentals. These fundamentals have a wide variety of applications. Those with more of an IT-focused background will learn that even if you don’t use graph theory, or optimize algorithms in your day job, many of these concepts are at the crux of many of the technologies that we use every day.Introducing HTTP Testing in ToDD
Now that ToDD has been in the public arena for two months, one of the things I’m happiest about is the fact that testing in ToDD is totally flexible. Thanks to the concept of testlets, ToDD doesn’t have an opinion on the specifics of your tests - all of that logic is contained within the testlet.
I believe there’s real value in going further than simple “ping” tests when validating that your network is working as you expect. Customers aren’t pinging you - they’re using your applications. To that end, I have introduced a new testlet to the ToDD project that makes HTTP calls and reports on application-level metrics.
There are some very real advantages to testing HTTP reachability instead of settling for simple “ping” tests. In addition to verifying network connectivity, HTTP testing also ensures that the web application is also up and able to produce the desired status code. We’re also able to get some insight into performance at the application level.
In my initial presentations on ToDD, I talked about a use case for being able to “keep your SaaS providers honest” by making HTTP requests against the services you use in a distributed manner:
The Continue reading
Introducing HTTP Testing in ToDD
Now that ToDD has been in the public arena for two months, one of the things I’m happiest about is the fact that testing in ToDD is totally flexible. Thanks to the concept of testlets, ToDD doesn’t have an opinion on the specifics of your tests - all of that logic is contained within the testlet.
I believe there’s real value in going further than simple “ping” tests when validating that your network is working as you expect. Customers aren’t pinging you - they’re using your applications. To that end, I have introduced a new testlet to the ToDD project that makes HTTP calls and reports on application-level metrics.
There are some very real advantages to testing HTTP reachability instead of settling for simple “ping” tests. In addition to verifying network connectivity, HTTP testing also ensures that the web application is also up and able to produce the desired status code. We’re also able to get some insight into performance at the application level.
In my initial presentations on ToDD, I talked about a use case for being able to “keep your SaaS providers honest” by making HTTP requests against the services you use in a distributed manner:
Introducing HTTP Testing in ToDD
Now that ToDD has been in the public arena for two months, one of the things I’m happiest about is the fact that testing in ToDD is totally flexible. Thanks to the concept of testlets, ToDD doesn’t have an opinion on the specifics of your tests - all of that logic is contained within the testlet. I believe there’s real value in going further than simple “ping” tests when validating that your network is working as you expect.Interop Vegas 2016
I’m happy to be given the opportunity to speak once more at Interop Vegas in 2016. No workshop for me this year, but I will be putting on three individual talks, all focusing on topics that have been very near and dear to me over the past year.
Last year I was very focused on putting the theory behind network automation into practical terms, and making it “real”. Over the past year I’ve seen rapid growth in adoption of these ideas, and I was happy to be just one very small part of helping to make that happen.
Since the last Interop, my career has steered me towards a more direct approach to network automation, specifically through software development. So I’d like to spend some time providing an overview of my sessions at the upcoming Interop Vegas 2016, which are all inspired by the last year of my career.
Test-Driven Network Automation
I am obviously very passionate about network automation, and have been very vocal about my belief that network automation only has a chance if it is done properly, which includes proper testing. I strongly believe that network automation can and should take place within the context of a Continue reading
Interop Vegas 2016
I’m happy to be given the opportunity to speak once more at Interop Vegas in 2016. No workshop for me this year, but I will be putting on three individual talks, all focusing on topics that have been very near and dear to me over the past year. Last year I was very focused on putting the theory behind network automation into practical terms, and making it “real”. Over the past year I’ve seen rapid growth in adoption of these ideas, and I was happy to be just one very small part of helping to make that happen.Next-Generation Network Telemetry
Late last year, I was pleased to be part of a special Tech Field Day event focused on network analytics. We had a day full of presentations from folks like Netflix, Google, and some goofball with a wrinkly jacket - all focused on what the next-generation networks will look like with respect to analytics.
This was a while ago, but I’ve wanted to write about this ever since, and a recent conversation gave me the spark I needed.
Microservices
First, I want to mention that - in no small part due to the Netflix presentation - this was one of the first times I’ve heard microservices brought up in a network tooling context. Sure, microservices are all the rage and we’ve definitely seen a lot of activity regarding how to bring our networks up to the level required by these new application architectures. However, starting with this event, I’ve also started to notice a tremendous value in approaching the network software itself with a microservices architecture, instead of the monolithic network monitoring/management software we use today.
More on that in a future post.
Out With The “Pull”, In With the “Stream”
If you haven’t watched any of the videos from Continue reading