Keeping It Classless

Author Archives: Keeping It Classless

[SDN Protocols] Part 5 – NETCONF

For those that followed my SDN Protocols series last summer, you might have noticed a missing entry: NETCONF. This protocol has actually existed for some time (the original now-outdated specification was published in 2006), but is appearing more often, especially in discussions pertaining to network automation. The current, updated specification - RFC6241 - covers a fairly large amount of material, so I will attempt to condense here. NETCONF operates at the management layer of the network, and therefore plays a role similar to that of OVSDB.

Go Go Gadget Networking Lab!

For the last few years, if you wanted to set up a virtual network environment (for testing purposes, or setting up a lab, etc), it was more or less a manual process of installing software like the CSR 1000v from an ISO or OVA. Rinse and repeat. If you were fortunate enough to work at a company with decent virtual machine automation and infrastructure (and had access to it) then you could in theory make this a little easier, but it’s hardly portable. However, this is still much better than it was only a few short years ago, when many vendors simply did not offer a virtual machine version of their routers and firewalls.

The other day I was catching up on some Twitter feed, and I noticed a tweet from John Deatherage that caught my eye:

I’ve been using Vagrant for about a year, so I’ve got a bit of experience with it, but mostly with server operating systems. Seeing this tweet reference it’s use in the context of spinning up instances of a Continue reading

Go Go Gadget Networking Lab!

For the last few years, if you wanted to set up a virtual network environment (for testing purposes, or setting up a lab, etc), it was more or less a manual process of installing software like the CSR 1000v from an ISO or OVA. Rinse and repeat. If you were fortunate enough to work at a company with decent virtual machine automation and infrastructure (and had access to it) then you could in theory make this a little easier, but it’s hardly portable.

Networks! Now, With More DevOps!

TL;DR - buzzwords suck and I want to rant about that.

I’ve been doing a lot of posts lately on the skillsets and technologies needed to move networking into the same level of productivity that other disciplines have reached. During this process, I’ve had time to contemplate labels and buzzwords.

By itself, I don’t see much value in the term “DevOps”, whether it’s succeeded by the phrase “for networking” or not. These days, the person using this term might just mean “automation”, or be describing a technical position.

As in “We’re looking for an experienced DevOp.” I know, right?

Just today I heard yet another story that illustrated a total misuse of this term, undoubtedly confusing all involved. I say, what’s in a name?

DevOps For Networks

This leads me down the path of considering that the phrase “DevOps for networking” is just as useless. Although I’m sure this was certainly not intended, this phrase implies that there is a special sector of the DevOps movement that is specific to networking. Unless you’re focusing on specific tools (which you shouldn’t be) then this isn’t the case. The underlying business value is precisely the same.

The DevOps culture and tooling that came Continue reading

Networks! Now, With More DevOps!

TL;DR - buzzwords suck and I want to rant about that. I’ve been doing a lot of posts lately on the skillsets and technologies needed to move networking into the same level of productivity that other disciplines have reached. During this process, I’ve had time to contemplate labels and buzzwords. By itself, I don’t see much value in the term “DevOps”, whether it’s succeeded by the phrase “for networking” or not.

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized.

Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:

For the record, it’s not fair to say that VLAN provisioning takes two weeks, even after change approval. What the server administrator is usually asking for is an entirely new logical network, and there’s much that has to happen in order to do this, the easiest of which is tagging the server port on the ToR. These networks have dependencies, like IP space, firewall and load balancer contexts. Sometimes, routing configurations have to be changed. Is the current provisioning model optimal, or even acceptable? Of course not - that’s why I’m focusing on the newer, more automated methods. However, there’s more than meets the eye here.

I also want Continue reading

Free-Form Discussion at CLEUR

I was fortunate enough to be invited out to Milan, Italy for Cisco Live Europe, and we had a few interesting discussions about a multitude of topics. One of them was more free-form than the others, and focused on defining SDN, what it’s value is, and where that value is most realized. Check out this video recording of the session; it was good to get a few perspectives from non-networkers, since I’m sure their perspective is different from the network administrator’s as it pertains to the ongoing shift in this industry:

Five Next-Gen Networker Skills

With all the flux that is going on in the networking space, it’s hard to figure out what to do next. You may want to add to your skillset, but you’re not sure where to throw your effort. I’d like to focus on five different areas you can focus on, without talking about a specific product - at the end of the day, that’s just implementation details. These areas are going to be increasingly more valuable and will help you be more marketable when added to your existing network knowledge and experience.

This isn’t meant to say that all of these skills are required to move your career forward; indeed, everyone’s situation is unique. These are just ideas - the way you implement these skillsets in your own life is up to you.

1. Software Skills

Here, I’m not necessarily talking about full-fledged code knowledge. This section isn’t about going and getting a 4 year CS degree. This is mostly about tools, methodologies, and workflows. For some, this will include some kind of interpreted language like Python, but will vary in degree greatly from person to person.

I_am_a_Programmer

To help get more detailed with this point, I’d like to drill down on four very Continue reading

Five Next-Gen Networker Skills

With all the flux that is going on in the networking space, it’s hard to figure out what to do next. You may want to add to your skillset, but you’re not sure where to throw your effort. I’d like to focus on five different areas you can focus on, without talking about a specific product - at the end of the day, that’s just implementation details. These areas are going to be increasingly more valuable and will help you be more marketable when added to your existing network knowledge and experience.

Network Automation @Interop Vegas 2015

In case you are planning on attending Interop in Las Vegas this year, I’d like to let you know about my two sessions, both centered around emerging methodologies and technologies in the networking space.

Practical Network Automation With Ansible and Python

This is going to be a 3 hour workshop, aiming to be a practical look into network automation. I picked the topics that I have been working with most heavily in this space, and I think this workshop will be a great way to get up to speed with some down-to-earth network automation methodologies.

I am going to separate this workshop into three main parts. I’m going to start with some of the basics, and move up in “difficulty” from there.

  1. YAML and Jinja2 - These are text-based specifications that allows tools like Ansible to do what they need to do. I will be making the assumption that attendees have little to no experience with either of these things, so I will spend some time exploring how these work. There’s not enough time in the workshop to be totally exhaustive, so I will only be covering the portions of either specification that are totally relevant for use with Ansible.

  2. Ansible - These Continue reading

Network Automation @Interop Vegas 2015

In case you are planning on attending Interop in Las Vegas this year, I’d like to let you know about my two sessions, both centered around emerging methodologies and technologies in the networking space. Practical Network Automation With Ansible and Python This is going to be a 3 hour workshop, aiming to be a practical look into network automation. I picked the topics that I have been working with most heavily in this space, and I think this workshop will be a great way to get up to speed with some down-to-earth network automation methodologies.

Remove Duplicates from Pocket List

One problem I’ve noticed with my Pocket list is that my reading list contains quite a few duplicate entires. Sometimes I forget I saved an article and I save it multiple times, or maybe I save it across-sources (like Twitter or Facebook, or just browsing. It looks like Pocket has some protective capabilities around this. If I endlessly spam the button provided to me by my Pocket chromecast extension, Pocket only saves the one copy and all is good.

Continuous Integration Pipeline for Networking

Popular development methodologies like Continuous Integration are usually accompanied by some kind of automated workflow, where a developer checks in some source code, which kicks off automated review, testing, and deployment jobs. I believe the same workflows can be adopted by network engineers. Let’s say you are the Senior Network Engineer for your entire company, which boasts a huge network. You don’t have time to touch every device, so you have a team of junior-level network engineers that help you out.

2014 Recap and 2015 Goals

When I started this post, the following mental image popped into my head, and I found it an apt description of 2014: Doing the year-end recap post. 2014 was all: pic.twitter.com/aXtC2sjN8l — Matt Oswalt (@Mierdin) December 30, 2014 Oh well…..let’s give this a try anyways. 2014 Recap I’ll list off the goals I set in my post one year ago, and reflect upon how they were pursued in 2014:

Automation Isn’t Just About Speed

In talking with folks about automation, the conversation almost always come around to “speed, speed, speed”. It’s easy to see why this is the first benefit that pops into mind - we’ve all spent gratuitous amounts of time doing repetitive, time-consuming tasks. It’s obvious why the prospect of automating these tasks and getting the time back is such an attractive one, even though most of us that have tried know that this is an absolute reality:

Automating SAN Zoning with Schprokits

Since this post was written, the company behind Schprokits has unfortunately gone out of business. Though this approach is no longer something that you can read and follow along with, I have left this post active as an academic exercise in network automation. I hope it is useful in some way. I recorded an in-depth explanation of the process (~42 mins), and it can be found here, as well as at the end of this post.

Source-Driven Configuration for NetOps

I mentioned in a previous post that version control is an important component of efficiently managing network infrastructure. I’m going to take is a step further than what most are doing with RANCID, which is traditionally used at the end of a workflow (gathering running config diffs) and show you what it’s like to start with version controlled configuration artifacts, specifically using Ansible’s “template” module. I’m not going to discuss how you get the resulting configurations actually running on your network devices - that is best saved for another post.

Storage Traffic Magic with OpenFlow

I am in the Bay Area this week, working on some network automation stuff, and I was fortunate to be able to stop by and say hello to the Storage Field Day 6 folks over drinks. I was told by several impressed delegates about a talk by Andy Warfield of Coho Data, where he described how they used OpenFlow to steer storage traffic intelligently to and from various nodes in a distributed storage array.

Mass Customization

I’ve mentioned in past articles about my belief that networking - both as a discipline and a technology - needs to be more consumable to other disciplines. But what does this mean? I was reminded of a few great examples today that I think are relevant to this idea, and might help explain my point a little more clearly. Mass Production Meets Customization The assembly line revolutionized the auto industry.

5 Dev Tools for Network Engineers

I’d like to write about five things that you as a hardcore, operations-focused network engineer can do to evolve your skillsets, and take advantage of some of the methodologies that have for so long given huge benefits to the software development community. I won’t be showing you how to write code - this is less about programming, and more about the tools that software developers use every day to work more efficiently.
1 … 5 6 7 8 9 … 21