Network Automation Roadmap

Chapter 4. Planning Your Adoption of Network Automation

If going from manual to automated network management is surely good and worth the effort, the problem becomes selecting which kinds of products and management platforms should be used to achieve that goal. This is a problem that, paradoxically, has been complicated by the very importance and usefulness of network automation. Since the arrival of digital communication networks, so many solutions to automate components of network management have been developed, from monolithic platforms to full custom software to tiny shell scripts in many different languages, that it can be really hard to choose which way to go or how to integrate separate tools. Let’s then look at some practical considerations for teams who are wanting to implement or improve their automation practices.

A single console that can be supported by automatic scripts but lets the administrators issue any command that the network supports while always presenting one coherent, interlined view of all relevant data is an essential component of every network automation solution. Over the past few years, this assumption has led to a few “turnkey” graphical dashboards promising network automation. Although the convenience of such user interfaces is without question, we all know the value of a platform goes well beyond its looks, and looks alone do not guarantee that the platforms are all equally efficient and sustainable in the long run. The potential problem is not ...