Automating Junos Administration

Preface

More and more, network administration and software development are converging. On the one hand, there is a push to develop new services that can be provisioned and managed at very high speeds and at a scale that would not be possible without software. This is typically known as software-defined networking (SDN). On the other hand, there is also a push for network administrators to deploy and manage existing services more efficiently by using automation to assist with day-to-day tasks. This book focuses on the latter problem.

While day-to-day network administration may not be the “hot” topic of the day, it is essential. Even very complex SDN solutions are built upon the foundation laid by a well-managed, reliable network. And, while the latest SDN technologies may come and go, it does not appear likely that the need for sound network management practices will disappear anytime soon.

Just as new technologies have presented some interesting and powerful solutions to certain network design problems, Junos supports a number of automation tools that present interesting and powerful solutions to common network automation tasks. Consider some of these possibilities:

• Representing your devices as Python objects and using Python to manage your devices

• Managing your devices from a central provisioning/administration system such as Ansible or Puppet

• Customizing the Junos software to detect and block commits that violate your network standards

• Developing custom CLI commands that present the ...