The Rules ofNetwork Automation… more what you’d call guidelines

than actual rules …

Jeremy Schulman@nwkautomaniac

Automation for Network Operations

Why should you care?How painful is automation today → future?What are your options?Who can we learn from?When will you take action?

Why should you care?

Does your business fail when your network fails?

... knowing you must automate your network operations

● Velocity

● Agility

● Stability

Business Value ⇔ Automation

● Lower Costs

● Reduce Risk

● Improve Service

Velocity

How quickly can you service existing market demands?● Instant gratification

● Customized experience

Agility

How quickly canyou address new and changing market opportunities?

Stability

Can you balance continuous operation while supporting velocity and agility?

Automation ⇔ Make IT or Break ITServer + Cloud is agile and automatedNetwork is the bottleneck

“unicorn” companies

everyone else

How painful is automationtoday → future?

Network Operations is Very PainfulMissions: Deploy Network Services

High Risk ComplexTasks

Low Risk SimpleTasks

Configuration Management

“config”

Situational Awareness

“show”

Isolated(blast radius = 0)

Distributed(blast radius ≥ 1)

Tool Choices Today are PainfulVendor Lock-In Build from Scratch

Operations → More + Painful + Complex

Switching

Routing Load balancer

Firewall

Multi-VendorAPIs

Network Infrastructure

Virtual Networking

Cloud Networking

NetOps Caught in the Chasm

● Not programmers● Frustrated● Disenfranchised

What are your options?

Automation is like Ice Cream

● Everyone wants it

● Everyone wants something different

● No one wants to make it

● No one wants to clean up the mess

Mission: Banana SplitFor kids birthday party

● Buy vs. build

● Customized experience

● Instant gratification

Factors:

Option 1: Vendor ProductIce cream shoppe

● Instant gratification

● “As Is”

● Vendor builds

● Vendor cleans-up

Option 2: Framework ProductSelf service froyo shoppe

● Near instant gratification

● Vendor provides a lot

● Customer builds too

● Customized experience

● Limited by options

● Assembly can get messy

Option 3: Build from ComponentsGrocery store

● Customer “shops” and “builds”

● Delayed gratification

● Good customized experience

● Lot of effort to build

● Lot of clean-up

● Very delayed gratification

● Make exactly what you want

● Best customized experience

● Maximum effort

● Maximum clean-up

Option 4: Build from ScratchDo it yourself

Choice & Control vs Time & Effort

Choice &

Control

Time & Effort

Product

Scratch

Framework

Component

Cooks | Chefs

Must NetOps be Programmers?

People who Eat Food

Home Cooks Professional Chefs

● Cook: career is making food for others

● Passion: cooking

● Formal training: yes

● Cook: they need to eat

● Passion: family, hobbies, ...

● Formal training: no

Home CooksHome Cooks Chefs

Skills and Expertise

focus on family for others too

Can only use a microwave - pizza, chicken nuggets

Competes at national level

Hosts dinner parties w/friends

< 1%

Professional ChefsCooks Professional Chefs

Skills and Expertise

focus on food on business too

< 1%

graduatedchef school owns restaurantexecutive chef Iron Chef

Lessons Learned

● Network Engineering is a craft● Software Engineering is a different craft● Both take years to develop for expertise● People | Process | Environmental factors● Culture change takes a long time

Who can we learn from?

Study the past if you would define the future.

-- Confucius

Code | Culture | Community

● Application developers and server operations ⇒ Tools

● Codify tribal knowledge into collective reuse and sharing

● Empower culture change and build communities (“DevOps”)

Developer + Operations (DevOps)Missions: Deploy Applications

ApplicationLifecycle

Management

ApplicationPerformanceMonitoring

Server Config Management

(Puppet, …)

Server Monitoring Tools

Configuration Management

“config”

Situational Awareness

“show”

Operations(blast radius = 0)

Developers(blast radius ≥ 1)

Lessons Learned

● 25% - DevOps coverage for NetOps● Networking ⇒ distributed, API orchestration● Need better tools for NetOps (inspired by DevOps)

● Need better Vendor-provided components● Culture change takes a long time

When will you take action?

When to Automate Networking?Emerging Technology and Products

committed projects now or very soon

Considerations

● You must plan your automation initiatives● Invest in your team that embrace change● Make automation part of your team’s bonus● Invest in equipment built for automation● Invest in new software tools for your team● Be patient, results take time

Summary

● Start planning network automation now● Review existing manual processes● Apply 80 / 20 rule● Watch for new frameworks and technology