Heavy Networking 442: The Source Of Truth Shall Set You Free (To Automate)

Today’s Heavy Networking guests make the case that you can’t successfully automate your network unless you start with a source of truth.
When embarking on an automation project you can get caught up in tool selection, frameworks, orchestration platforms, product reviews, and organizational responsibilities and nomenclatures.
But without a source of truth for the devices you want to automate, you’ll find it hard to get very far.
We have two guests to talk about how they built, populated, and manage their own source of truth to underpin a major automation project: Damien Garros, Network Reliability Engineer; and Adam Mills, Principal Engineer. Both work at the gaming platform Roblox.
We start by defining a source of truth and how it relates to key device properties including naming conventions, IP addresses, cabling information, VLANs, BGP peering, and more.
Our guests share lessons learned, including why you can’t assume homogeneity, why you’ll need to be prepared to manage multiple sources of truth, and the koan-like principle that “you always follow the rule, except when there is an exception, in which case you follow a new rule based on that exception.”
Damien and Adam also talk about how to manage network device properties as code, and why they chose the open-source tools Netbox and Git as key repositories.
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Sponsor: Cumulus Networks
Cumulus Linux allows you to affordably build and efficiently operate your network like the world’s largest data center operators, unlocking vertical network stacks. Combined with Cumulus NetQ, an operational management tool, organizations can take advantage of deeper analytics and advanced telemetry to increase visibility across the network and reduce mean time to resolution. Find out more at cumulusnetworks.com/epicpushers.
Show Links:
Network Device Properties As Code – Slideshare
Network Device Properties As Code – PDF
Managing Network Device Properties as Code – Damien Garros (YouTube)
Ansiblefest 2018 Network automation journey at roblox – Slideshare
Netbox – GitHub