Heavy Networking 462: You’re Not A Coder, But You Need A Coder

Today on Heavy Networking, we talk about what an ops team looks like when adopting automation.
Network automation seems to be driving many of you towards Python. You’re learning to code, or least trying to. If you could just get that tool written, it would help so much.
It’s hard though, what with projects going on, not enough people to do all the work, a huge network maintenance event on the horizon, and on and on.
And dare I say technical debt? You gotta maintain that tool if you ever get it written.
Maybe writing your own automation tools isn’t your job as a network engineer. Maybe you need someone to come alongside of you…like a software developer.
Our guests today are Brian Gleason and Jeremy Schulman. Brian has recently started a new job where network automation is really important and handled in a forward-thinking way.
Jeremy‘s been in the world of network automation for as long as we’ve been talking about it on Heavy Networking. He’s worked for vendors, his own startup, and now for Major League Baseball.
We discuss:

* Whether an Ops team needs a dedicated developer
* The different types of automation projects and their blast radii
* How to calculate ROI for having a developer dedicated to infrastructure tooling
* The differences between scripting and programming
* How much time you should dedicate to learning to develop, and where to start
* The pros and cons of buying vendor tools vs. building your own

Sponsor: ExtraHop
ExtraHop is the enterprise cyber analytics company delivering performance and security from the inside out. ExtraHop offers complete visibility with machine learning to help you make quick, confident decisions about your IT environment. Explore the ExtraHop Performance Platform at extrahop.com/packetpushers.
Sponsor: ITProTV
Get over 65 hours of free technical training from ITProTV. ITProTV offers online instruction in CompTIA, Cisco, VMWare, Microsoft and more. You can stream courses live and on demand on your favorite device. Sign up for a free membership at itpro.tv/packet-pushers and try it with no obligation.
Show Links:
Interactive Python
Jupyter Notebooks – Jupyter.org
Brian Gleason on Twitter
Bytes of Cloud – Brian’s blog
Jeremy Schulman on Twitter