Chapter 11. Putting Automation into Practice

Throughout this book, you’ve learned lots of techniques for carrying out automation. But just as you wouldn’t use a screwdriver to drive a nail into a board, you need to make sure you use the correct tool for each automation task. Moreover, you need to make sure that you use the tools correctly.

This chapter provides examples of which tools to use to automate various tasks. It also discusses best practices for using your automation tools safely.

Use Cases

Here are some ways you might want to use automation to ease the management of your Junos devices. These use cases are derived from a combination of our experience automating and managing networks, and requests we have seen from Junos users.

The use cases are presented in a scenario/solution format. The scenario describes the goal of the automation, while the solution gives a high-level overview of the way (or ways) recommended to implement the automation.

The use cases are roughly divided into two categories: configuration and operation. However, the categories are necessarily imprecise, as much automation involves configuration and is used in the operation of a network.

Configuration Use Cases

These use cases cover automation scenarios that are primarily focused on the initial configuration of a device, or on the ongoing management of a device’s configuration.