This is my first post about Network Automation so i will start with asking some questions and answering them. What is Network Automation actually? Why do we need it? Is it a must or nice to have skill for a network engineer? Lets start with answering those questions. Best description i can found on the Internet was in Juniper Networks’s Site. I want to quote from there;

Network automation is the process of automating the configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operations of physical and virtual devices within a network. Juniper Networks

As the description said above it is a process. Method of the automation may vary from scripts, playbooks and so on. Okay now we know what is Network Automation. Next question was why do we need it? I as an ISP Data & Security Support Engineer am using it to automate daily tasks, configurate thousands of routers with time efficiency, generate reports from multi-vendor products and correct configuration mistakes. In my opinion it is must for a network engineer to know how to automate tasks. It has numerous benefits. For example:

  • It eliminates human error from doing same tasks over and over again
  • It saves time and increase efficiency
  • It increases the problem solving and analysing skills

There are already lots of blog posts videos and guides on the internet for explaining how to setup Python and how to start coding. I will skip those parts and just leave some useful links

I recommend you to start learning Python 3 instead of Python 2.

Finally we have some answers and some places to start from in the next post i will walk through with you from what do we need to accomplish a simple network automation task like bulk configuration.

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Automation, Network,

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