CEX (Code EXpress) 05. From lists to separate variables and back.
Hello my friend,
So far, we have covered the separate variables and the list variables in the Python 3.8. Before we go further, it makes sense how you can convert one type of the variables to another. Therefore, we discuss this topic today.
Network automation training – boost your career
Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.
How does the training differ from this blog post series? Here you get the basics and learn some programming concepts in general, whereas in the training you get comprehensive set of knowledge with the detailed examples how to use Python for the network and IT automation. You need both.
What are we going to do today?
Working with variables is an essential part of any programming language including Python. Part of such a work is a conversion of a variable of one type to another and back. That’s why we will explore today the following functions:
- split() function, which transforms a string value into a list of variables based on a defined separator;
- join() function, which transforms a list into a string value using Continue reading
CEX (Code EXpress) 04. List what you need.
Hello my friend,
We continue discussion about the variable in the Python, which we have started in the previous article. Today we cover new type, which is very useful and, therefore, widely used. In various programming languages, this type is known under various names. So, who is here?
Network automation training – boost your career
Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.
How does the training differ from this blog post series? Here you get the basics and learn some programming concepts in general, whereas in the training you get comprehensive set of knowledge with the detailed examples how to use Python for the network and IT automation. You need both.
What are we going to do today?
Answering to the question in the end of the preamble, here is the list. It is also known under the name array; however, in the Python’s terminology list is the correct term. The list variable contains any amount of the elements (starting from zero), which are siblings to each other, and they can be of any type as described in the previous article. Continue reading
CEX (Code EXpress) 03. Variable is better than fixed.
Hello my friend,
We are slowly but surely start talking about more and more useful and interesting topics staying yet at a basic level. Today you will learn about variables in Python, as variables are obviously the basic building block of any tool.
Network automation training – boost your career
Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.
How does the training differ from this blog post series? Here you get the basics and learn some programming concepts in general, whereas in the training you get comprehensive set of knowledge with the detailed examples how to use Python for the network and IT automation. You need both.
What are we going to do today?
We will learn how to create and use in Python 3.8 several types of the variables such as:
- Numbers
- Strings
- Boolean
The different types of variables are used for the different purposes, that’s why the more variables’ type you know, the better code you can write. We must admit that this list of the variables isn’t complete. That is why in the next couple of blogposts you will see Continue reading
CEX (Code EXpress) 02. Your first Python code.
Hello my friend,
I was thinking what the next thing shall be right after you have installed the Python. Initially I was thinking about another topic, but decided to get some fun for you, as doing something is definitely fun.
Network automation training – boost your career
Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.
How is the training different from this blog post series? Here you get the basics and learn some programming concepts in general, whereas in the training you get comprehensive set of knowledge with the detailed examples how to use Python for the network and IT automation. You need both.
What are we going to do today?
Today is a big day in your Python journey, mate. Today you will create and execute your first Python code. It will be simple and will do only one task: it will print fixed text. However, it has an enormous value for your learning curve in programming.
Why does it matter?
Despite it looks very easy, there are a couple of aspects, which are important for your further progress:
- Knowing how to create Continue reading
CEX (Code EXpress) 01. It starts with… the installation.
Hello my friend,
Time to time we are getting the messages from you that it is getting tougher to find a proper job in the pure networking world. Success of self-service models coming from the clouds and hyperscalers creates the push on the traditional networking business. In its turn, this transformation requires network engineers to gain new skills such as programming and data analytics.
Network automation training – boost your career
Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.
If you still don’t feel it is necessary, take a look at skills needed for network engineer role these days at open job positions.
Introduction to the Code EXpress (CEX) format
To avoid any confusions, we continue writing about multivendor network development and automation. However, we feel it is necessary to start talking also about the software development and programming at a basic level. The network engineers in a vast majority aren’t very familiar with the Python, Ansible and even Bash, so we want to cover this gap.
The best way to get comprehensive skills in this area is to get to our network automation Continue reading
EVENTS. My experience attending and speaking at UKNOF 45 in London.
Hello my friend,
This year, besides Cisco championship started for me with an opportunity to speak at UKNOF event in London. UKNOF stands for United Kingdom’s Network Operators’ Forum, and per their webpage acts as an open forum for operational, technical and engineering information exchange related to networking technologies and practices. And here is my experience.
How do I get there?
Some time ago I was presenting at NetLdn event in a nice pub in London, and apparently there were some people from the UKNOF board (hey, Chris Russel).
I have an interesting discussion with NetLdn organizers some time ago, you can watch it on our YouTube channel.
They advised me to submit my talk to UKNOF, and if the committee voted for it, I’d have an opportunity to speak in front of quite a big audience at UKNOF 45 in London. I was positively surprised and took that opportunity to apply for a talk. After a month of waiting I finally got an invitation to talk at the 45th UKNOF meeting, which took place in London.
Despite I have an almost ready slide deck, I need to rework it a bit to comply with the event’s Continue reading
Cisco Champion 2020
Dear friend,
I hope you have a relaxing holiday period and now you are ready to kick off the new year. For us year has already started 2 days ago…
… With announcement that our blog is chosen to be Cisco Champion in 2020. We are very delightful to be a Cisco Champion two times in a row (2019 and 2020). Thank you very much for supporting us, for your interest and your questions.
The good news for you is that the application is yet opened for a couple of days, so you can try to apply yourself.
Discalimer
If you even more interested in your future, join our network automation training we start on 18th and 22nd of January, where we cover the details of the data modelling, NETCONF/YANG, REST API, Python and Ansible in the multivendor environment with Cisco, Nokia, Arista and Cumulus Linux as network functions.
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2020!
Dear friend,
The year 2019 is almost over and it is a time to sincerely thank you for the time you spend reading this blog, for all your questions, ideas and suggestions. All these things gives us inspiration to continue blogging about new things for you, dear friend!
We wish you jolly time over the holidays period with your families and friends. We wish you to achieve all your professional and personal goals in 2020! Let the year be successful for you and your loved ones!
Merry Christmas and Happy New 2020 Year!
BR, Anton
DC. Part 16. Microsoft Azure SONiC on the Mellanox switches in data centre (with Cisco XR an Nokia SR OS for inter-OP).
Hello my friend,
The Christmas and New Year is coming, so it is typically the time to think about the future and plan ahead. And today we look into future by reviewing the new network operation system deployed in the data centres hosting Microsoft Azure clouds. This operation system is called SONiC: Software for Open Networking in the Cloud.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Discalimer
If you even more interested in your future, join our network automation training we start on 18th and 22nd of January, where we cover the details of the data modelling, NETCONF/YANG, REST API, Python and Ansible in the multivendor environment with Cisco, Nokia, Arista and Cumulus Linux as network functions.
Thanks
Special thanks for Avi Alkobi from Mellanox for providing me the Mellanox SN2010 for tests and initial documentation for Microsoft Azure SONiC setup.
Brief description
Everyone talks about the clouds. You can hear about public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, clouds interconnection Continue reading
Podcast with Cumulus on Infrastructure-as-a-code in real life.
Hello my friend,
I had an honour to be invited to Cumulus Linux podcast, where we had quite an interesting discussion about the role of network automation and real-life challenges.
The discussion covered the experience we collected in THG (The Hut Group) Hosting during driving the build of the open network data centres implementing the latest achievements of white boxes, disaggregation and (add your marketing buzzword here). And yes, we speak about real-life experience, not the lab tests in Cumulus VX 
The whole podcast you can list at the Cumulus Website.
Support us
P.S.
If you have further questions or you need help with your networks, I’m happy to assist you, just send me message. Also don’t forget to share the article on your social media, if you like it.
BR,
Anton Karneliuk
Guest blog on network automation at THG Tech
Hello my friend,
I’m very proud of working for THG as we are developing really outstanding technical solutions with a high level of automation. If you run massive-scale networks (like we do in the data centre field), the automation is a single option to survive.
These days many people speak about network automation, but what is it in a nutshell? What role does it play? What are the customer expectations to the network and IT business related to the network automation.
Some answers to these questions and many more useful and interesting information you can find in my guest blog in THG Tech blog
Follow me there as well, if you like the post.
Support us
P.S.
If you have further questions or you need help with your networks, I’m happy to assist you, just send me message. Also don’t forget to share the article on your social media, if you like it.
BR,
Anton Karneliuk
SEC 2. Data plane and control plane protection in the networking (Nokia, Cisco and Mellanox/Cumulus) for IPv6.
Hello my friend,
After the release of the previous article outlining the data and control plane security for IPv4 in Cisco, Nokia and Mellanox/Cumulus (link) I’ve got several requests about the security in IPv6. The requests were fair enough and with this article we close this gap.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Thanks
Special thanks for Avi Alkobi from Mellanox and Pete Crocker and Attilla de Groot from Cumulus for providing me the Mellanox switch and Cumulus license for the tests.
Disclaimer
This is the fourth article in the series about the Mellanox/Cumulus switch. The three previous are:
- Building lab with Mellanox SN2010
- Configuring Segment Routing on Mellanox/Cumulus, Cisco IOS XR and Nokia SR OS and connecting physical and virtual networks
- Data and control plane protection in Mellanox/Cumulus, Cisco IOS XR and Nokia SR OS
Brief description
The importance of the security for the network in terms of the control and data plane protection was explained in the previous article Continue reading
SEC 1. Data plane and control plane protection in the networking (Nokia, Cisco and Mellanox/Cumulus) for IPv4.
Hello my friend,
This is the third article where we use the Mellanox SN 2010 running Cumulus Linux. And today we cover enormously important topic: network security. More precisely, we will speak about the data plane and the control plane protection. Cisco IOS XR and Nokia SR OS accompany us in this journey.
Thanks
Special thanks for Avi Alkobi from Mellanox and Pete Crocker and Attilla de Groot from Cumulus Networks for providing me the Mellanox switch and Cumulus license for the tests.
Disclaimer
This blogpost is the continuation of the previous one, where we have brought the Mellanox SN 2010 to the operational with Cumulus Linux 3.7.9 on board. If you want to learn the details about this process, you are welcomed to read that article.
Brief description
Each week you can find the news describing the security breaches. In the modern economy, where the Internet plays already a key role, all the connected businesses (and almost all businesses are connected) are on the risk caused by casual network scanning and brood force attacks. In addition to that, big companies and governments are quite often the attack targets for other companies, governments and criminals. Therefore, Continue reading
DC 15. Segment-routing/MPLS on the data centre white box switch and VNF/PNF networking (Nokia, Cisco and Mellanox/Cumulus).
Hello my friend,
the article today would be very special because of three following points. First of all, we’ll talk about the segment routing, which is the leading technology today for building service providers and emerging for DC. Second, you will learn how to connect VNFs with the real network devices. Third, we will fork Cumulus Linux with modified FRR. Thrilled? Let’s go!
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Thanks
Special thanks for Avi Alkobi from Mellanox and Pete Crocker and Attilla de Groot from Cumulus for providing me the Mellanox switch and Cumulus license for the tests. Additional thank to Anton Degtyarev from Cumulus for consulting me on FRR details.
Disclaimer
This blogpost is the continuation of the previous, where we have brought the Mellanox SN 2010 to the operational with Cumulus Linux 3.7.9 on board. If you want to learn the details about this process, you are welcomed to read that article.
Continue reading
vlog. Episode 6. Closed-loop automation [LIVE]
Hello my friend,
This vlog episode I’m alone. Eh… But I have an opportunity to share with you the talk I’ve delivered an the NetLdn #6 event two weeks ago. Now you have an opportunity to watch this talk as well!
In this episode you will see the high-level description of the Data Centre Fabric Project I’ve been doing this year with the focus on the closed-loop automation using open-source tools. Additionally, you will see LIVE DEMO of the closed-loop automation as an extension to ZTP, where the full data centre fabric running Cumulus switches will be provisioned from zero to full operational state.
If you’ve recently read about Mellanox/Cumulus, the same approach perfectly fits this pair.
But it is not only about Cumulus. Any network supplier we’ve discussed (Arista, Nokia, Cisco and much more) can be provisioned in such a way, and you can find the sample templates in the GitHub repo.
Support us
Continue reading
DC 14. Real case of using ZTP to setup Mellanox SN 2010 with Cumulus Linux.
Hello my friend,
Earlier in this year we’ve discussed zero touch provisioning using the Data Centre Fabric Enabler Infrastructure. As always in my articles, I’ve used wonderful VM images, which are freely available on the Internet. Nevertheless, when you deal with real boxes, various caveats might arise. Today we’ll review how to bring Mellanox switch SN 2010 to the operational state running Cumulus Linux using the ZTP framework I’ve already created.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Thanks
Special thanks for Avi Alkobi from Mellanox and Pete Crocker and Attilla de Groot from Cumulus for providing me the Mellanox switch and Cumulus license for the tests.
Disclaimer
It is always exciting to do something for the first time. I have never written about any particular network device. Mostly because I always separate, as far as it is possible, the relationship between my current employer, which is The Hut Group as of today, and my blog. And this is the justification, why Continue reading
vlog. Episode 5. NetLdn: Networking for Networkers
Hello my friends,
It is always cool to talk about various network technologies with the engineers from industry, and to meet some awesome chaps. I had a pleasure to attend such an event in London in the last months. Learn my findings on that.
In this episode, together with James Bensley and Richard Patterson from Sky we discuss the the NetLdn event series. The event, where you can discuss network technoligies with the peers and, perhaps, make some friends.
Don’t forget to subscribe for the channel, put likes and repost the video if you like that! 
Support us
P.S.
If you have further questions or you need help with your networks, I’m happy to assist you, just send me message. Also don’t forget to share the article on your social media, if you like it.
BR,
Anton Karneliuk
REST API 3. Basics cheat sheet (Ansible, Bash, Postman, and Python) for PATCH/PUT using NetBox
Hello my friend,
This is the third and the last article about REST API basics. In the previous articles, you have learned how to collect information and create/delete new entries. Today you will learn how to modify existing entries.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Disclaimer
This article is a continuation of the two previous: GET and POST/DELETE. You should start with that to get the full picture.
What are we going to test?
You will learn how to use two requests:
- PATCH for modifying information for existing entries
- PUT for modifying information for existing entries
As you might remember, the interaction with the REST API is described by CRUD model, what stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete. In this concept, Update operation is represented by PATCH and PUT HTTP methods. Later in this article you will figure out what is the difference between PATCH and PUT. It is significant.
To put the context, we will Continue reading
REST API 2. Basics cheat sheet (Ansible, Bash, Postman, and Python) for POST/DELETE using NetBox and Docker as examples
Hello my friend,
In the previous blogpost, we started the exciting journey in the world of REST API, where you have learned how to collect the information using GET method. Today you will learn how to create the objects using POST method and remove them using DELETE.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Disclaimer
This article is a continuation of the previous one. You should start with that to get the full picture.
What are we going to test?
You will learn how to use two requests
- POST for adding new information
- DELETE for removing the entries
As you might remember, the interaction with the REST API is described by CRUD model, what stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete. In this concept, HTTP POST method represents Create and DELETE represents Delete operaions.
To put the context, Digital Ocean NetBox and Docker are the applications, which we will manage over the REST API.
Software version
The following Continue reading
REST API 1. Basics cheat sheet (Ansible, Bash, Postman, and Python) for GET using NetBox and Docker as examples
Hello my friend,
There was a small pause with the blogposts caused by heavy load I had with the ongoing projects. However, I hope you enjoyed watching some videos I have prepared for you with the awesome guests. Today we are going to discuss some details about REST API using Digital Ocean NetBox and Docker as examples.
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the
prior permission of the author.
Brief description
The REST API was already extensively used in my previous articles about the Data Centre Fabric project such as NetBox integration with the Infrastructure Enabler Stack, monitoring of the network infrastructure using Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana or closed-loop automation with Kapacitor. Nevertheless, we haven’t discussed how to work with the REST API itself.
In terms of using the Web applications, there are four main action types forming CRUD abbreviation:
- C – CREATE is an action type, which creates the entry within the application database.
- R – READ is an action type, which extract the existing information out of the Continue reading