Initial Post with GitHub and Jekyll
Over the past several months, I’ve found myself holding back on writing posts simply because my blog platform does not support the ability to embed code or even change fonts to resemble code, CLI, or working on a terminal. Screen shots are good, but offering the ability to copy and paste is nice, plus it just looks cleaner. This is unacceptable.
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Programmatic Access to CLI Devices with TextFSM
One of the harder things to do when it comes to network automation is work with the majority of the install base that exists out there. This is true even if we focus purely on data extraction, i.e. issuing show commands and getting the results in an automated fashion. The reason for this is that most devices do not support returning structured data in formats such as JSON or XML, and this often times makes automation a non-starter for network engineers.
Traditionally, SSH is used to connect to a network device, issue a command, and dump plain text results back to the user. This leaves the user with the task of parsing through raw text and probably working with a library built for working with regular expressions, e.g. re for Python. If you make it this far, you become an expert in using expressions like this: ([A-Z])w+. And that’s not even a hard one! Regex party, anyone? I’ll pass.
TextFSM to the Rescue
What if there was a way to simplify the process of getting structured data out of the raw text a network device responds with? As luck would have it, there is definitely a better way. Continue reading
Hyperglance: Visualising ALL of your IT infrastructure
In this modern world where the whole IT industry is pondering what the next steps, trends and operational requirements will be, one thing is sure, we’re in an era of collaboration and integration.
We’ve been through learning curves around converged network fabrics, traditional silo based approaches encroaching on each other and managerial headaches of rapidly deploying new enterprise and webscale applications. Cloud is now a domestic term and the IT industry seeks new cooler ways of delivering technology. Container popularity is rapidly rising and the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ is now becoming a real world thing as opposed to a ‘it will happen folks!’ statement.
Winding back to the opening statements, with a system comprised of physical tin, hypervisors, container providers, microservices, machine-to-machine communication, mobile end points, block and blob storage, even if this sat with one vendor it’s a complex set of mush. Throw in ten different vendors, a mashup of APIs and operational territory problems, we have a real problem.
I’m a human – not a machine!
All the recent Hollywood blockbusters focus on human efforts to generate realistic and complex AI (artificial intelligence), but how about humans trying to manage already complex systems? Every vendor and Continue reading
Share your Expertise – Become an INE Instructor!
Do you think you have what it takes to become a featured instructor at INE? We are looking for talented individuals to propose and execute new courses across multiple domains including: networking, programming, systems administration, and security. If you’re an expert in any of these domains, or related topics, then it’s time to share your knowledge with the world! Speak a language other than English? That’s great! We’re open to ideas for courses in different languages.
Click here for more information and to submit an application.
Not interested in becoming an instructor but have some ideas for content you’d like to see us cover? Drop us a line at [email protected].