Network Automation Development Environments
Building the network automation lab environment seems to be one of the early showstoppers on everyone’s network automation journey. These resources might help you get started:
- I wrote an installation script that installs the myriad dependencies needed by Ansible and NAPALM in just the right order on a Ubuntu VM (step-by-step instructions for ipSpace.net subscribers).
- Carl Buchmann open-sourced a full-blown infrastructure-as-code development environment he uses for his automation projects.
- Jaap de Vos described how he creates a Docker image containing Ansible, NAPALM and Nornir.
Hint: after setting up your environment, you might want to enroll into the Spring 2019 network automation course ;)



David Ulevitch, who was once in charge of Cisco’s security business, is leaving to become a general partner at Andreesson Horowitz.
Three companies opened the OCP Experience Center for testing new and proposed OCP technologies and for conducting demonstrations of open OCP hardware designs.
The new facility plays into the data center provider’s plan to pull hyperscale cloud deals away from competitors including Equinix.
eBay ditches OpenStack in favor of Kubernetes and Docker; AT&T awards 5G contracts; Arista makes second acquisition.
The etcdadm tool automates the configuration, deployment, and management of etcd clusters used by Kubernetes to store control plane information.
GTT is also working with another recent acquisition, Interoute, to move its SD-WAN to a universal CPE approach with an integrated firewall.
The software-defined platform runs on top of Cohesity, Cisco, HPE, or Dell EMC hyperconverged secondary storage appliances.
The former Sprint executive says that there are too many SD-WAN competitors in the market muddying the message to enterprises.
In the rush to capitalize on NFV many operators have focused purely on the NFV orchestration, but as they move from trials to production, one key piece is missing — management.