CSAU – Introducing Automation for Cisco Solutions v1.1

Course objectives

After taking this training, you should be able to:

• Articulate the role network automation and programmability play in the context of end-to-end network management and operations
• Define and differentiate between waterfall and agile software development methodologies
• Interpret and troubleshoot Python scripts with fundamental programming constructs built for network automation use cases
• Describe how DevOps principles, tools, and pipelines can be applied to network operations
• Understand the role of network automation development environments and associated technologies such as Python virtual environments, Vagrant, and Docker
• Understand and construct HTTP-based API calls to network devices
• Articulate the differences among and common use cases for XML, JSON, YAML, and protobuf
• Construct and interpret Python scripts using the Python requests module to automate devices that have HTTP-based APIs
• Understand the role YANG plays in network automation
• Understand that a number of tools exist to simplify working with YANG models
• Describe the functionality of RESTCONF and NETCONF and the differences between them
• Construct Ansible playbooks to configure network devices and retrieve operational state data from them
• Build Jinja2 templates and YAML data structures to generate desired state configurations

Lab outline

• Use Network Automation Scripts
• Enforce Python Fundamentals on the Interactive Interpreter
• Automate Networks with Netmiko
• Use the Git Version-Control System and Collaborate on an Internal Project
• Build Reproduceable Automation Environments
• Use HTTP-Based APIs with Postman
• Explore YAML and JSON Data
• Consume HTTP-Based APIs with Python Requests
• Explore YANG Tools
• Explore RESTCONF with Python
• Explore NETCONF with Python
• Configure Network Devices with Ansible
• Collect Network Data with Ansible
• Build and Deploy Configurations with Ansible