Network Automation: Leaky Abstractions
I hear people talk about leaky abstractions all the time. I’m not sure that some of the people that use it have researched the term. As network-automation blurs the line between software and...
View ArticleCloud Native: Upgrading a Workflow Engine or Orchestrator
On a train this morning, I read Ivan Pepelnjak’s Twitter stream (because what else is there to do whilst relaxing with a coffee?), I came across this blog post on upgrading virtual-appliances. Couldn’t...
View ArticleNetwork Automation Engineer Persona: Targeted Learning
The series of Network Automation Engineer (NAE) Persona blog posts have churned some comments in the community around learning. Part of the feedback appears to be the hero syndrome fighting back and...
View ArticleA Christmas Support Story
Warning: Non-Technical Post As it’s the festive period and this time of the year is for caring and sharing, here’s a short story from many years ago. This might make some chuckle, but some of these...
View ArticleDescribing Network Automation: Automate the Coffee
How to Describe Automation Cisco Live, Milan, 2014, the place where everyone drinks a caffé! It was this year that Cisco’s DevNet began to grow and my passion for software, automation and networking...
View ArticleAutomation for Reliability
Statistics says, the more often you do something, the higher the chances of a negative event occurring when you do it. Applying this revelation, if you fly regularly, the chances increase of a delayed...
View ArticleYANG, OpenAPI, Swagger and Code Generation
Sometimes during exploration or projects, I want to take a YANG model and convert it along with related dependencies to a Swagger format (think OpenAPI if you’re not familiar with this) so I can create...
View ArticleTo Code Or Not To Code: Expression & Symbiosis
There is still an ongoing debate over the need for network engineers to pick up some software skills. Everything network engineers touch in more recent times has some programmatic means of control and...
View ArticleFormalisation of Automation: WIP
For the last five or six years, I’ve not really done any networking and have focussed on software, automation and the mechanisation of processes so that they may be manifested as network driving...
View ArticleOpinionated Automation: Packaged, Extensible & Closed Systems
Network engineers for the last twenty years have created networks from composable logical constructs, which result in a network of some structure. We call these constructs “OSPF” and “MPLS”, but they...
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