Network Automation Nerds Podcast

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Network Automation Nerds podcast! In this episode, I welcome my good friend Jaime Botello to talk about network automation in the gaming industry. Long gone are the days of putting a disk into a console to play games, we now play AAA games on our mobile devices, internet-connected consoles, and just about every screen you can imagine.

It is not often we get to take a peek into how network automation is done in the gaming industry, I know Jaime was one of the few engineers who went thru all the trouble of getting internal approvals so he can share his knowledge with the community.

Not only is Jaime an outstanding engineer, but he is also just a cool guy whom I love to hang out with whenever I get a chance. I hope you enjoy this episode with Jaime!

-- Links --
Connect with Jaime on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-botello-044697/
Jaime Riot Direct Network Presentation (DevNet Create 2020 / Interop Digital 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqBTa1jDRHs
Presentation Deck: https://dcl3wxcscqm28.cloudfront.net/8130338649073540/5068654952900484/TECH-12%20Riot%20Direct%20Network%20as%20Code%20DevNet%202020_v2.pdf
Hank Preston Building a NetDevOps CI/CD Pipeline (DevNet Create 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LinGy8DGIJ8
Jaime Presentation (Spanish): ​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U2Fhrv0Ass
Network Programmability and Automation: https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programmability-Automation-Next-Generation-Engineer/dp/1491931256/ 

--- Stay in Touch with Us —

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou
Subscribe on Apple Podcast for Bonus Episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/network-automation-nerds-podcast/
Patreon of the show: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522 

Today on the show, we will be talking to Ken Celenza, VP of Professional Services at Network to Code. If you have been following this podcast, you know we have already had several guests from NTC on this show, including the founder Jason Edelman. Ken is employee #1 at Network to Code, joined about a year after Jason bootstrapped the company and it has been a heck of a ride. 

Don't be fooled by Ken’s VP title, however, he is super technical and a network geek at heart. We will talk to Ken about his engineering journey, how he got interested in networking, and also about this unique space he called the ‘application dictionary’. 

I am very excited to welcome Ken to the show, let's dive right in! 

-- Show Notes --

Connect with Ken on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kencelenza/
Follow Kenon Twitter: https://twitter.com/itdependsnet
Ken’s Blogs on NTC: https://blog.networktocode.com/authors/ken-celenza
Application Dictionary: https://blog.networktocode.com/post/application-dictionary/
Awesome Network Automation: https://github.com/networktocode/awesome-network-automation
NTC NetUtils: https://github.com/networktocode/netutils
Read Network to Code Blogs: https://blog.networktocode.com/
Blogs by Matt Vitale (getting started with Network Automation): https://blog.networktocode.com/authors/matt-vitale
Premature Optimization (is the Root of All Evils): https://blog.networktocode.com/post/Principle-YAGNI/ 

--- Stay in Touch with Us —
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou
Subscribe on Apple Podcast for Bonus Episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/network-automation-nerds-podcast/
Patreon of the show: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522 

Today on the show, we will be talking to Jaime Buelta. Jaime is the author of Python Automation Cookbook, Python Architecture Patterns, Docker for Microservices with Python, and currently works as SDE at Amazon. 

Jaime talked to us about how he got started with Python, his experience with the different developer roles, using Python for automation tasks, and some of the design patterns when coding in Python. 

I am super excited to chat with Jaime and I know we will all have a great time learning from Jaime. Let's dive in!

--- Show Links —

Connect with Jaime on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-buelta-27305817/
Follow Jaime on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaimebuelta
Jaime’s Website and Blog: https://wrongsideofmemphis.com/
Books by Jaime: https://www.amazon.com/Jaime-Buelta/e/B07GC7F3XB?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1650036969&sr=8-1 

--- Stay in Touch with Us —

Subscribe on Apple Podcast for Bonus Episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/network-automation-nerds-podcast/
Patreon of the show: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

In this episode, I have the distinct honor to welcome Dinesh Dutt to the show. Dinesh is the author of one of my favorite Data Center Networking books, ‘Cloud Native Data Center Networking’, by O’Reilly Media. He served as Chief Scientist at Cumulus Networks, was a Fellow at Cisco Systems, co-author of TRILL and VxLAN, and has filed for over 40 patents.

In the last few years, Dinesh has been spending a lot of time working on an open-source, multi-vendor network observability platform called SuzieQ. The company he founded to support SuzieQ, Stardust Systems, was recently named as one of the '2022 Cool Vendors in Network Automation' by Gartner.

Dinesh shared with me his path in networking, the experience of working on SuzieQ, and many of the lessons he learned along the way. I had a blast and I am sure you will enjoy this episode.

Links

Connect with Dinesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddutt/
Follow Dinesh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ddcumulus?lang=en
Follow Dinesh on Medium: https://medium.com/@ddps4u
Stardust Systems: https://www.stardustsystems.net/
SuzieQ (Enterprise Support and Slack Channel): https://www.stardustsystems.net/contact-us/
SuzieQ Documentation: https://suzieq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Apache Parquet: https://parquet.apache.org/
Cloud Native Data Center Networking: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081VVXN2X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Closing the Loop on Testing Network Changes: https://www.intentionet.com/blog/closing-the-loop-on-testing-network-changes/ 

--- Stay in Touch with Us —

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

--- Support the Show —

Subscribe on Apple Podcast for Bonus Episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/network-automation-nerds-podcast/
Patreons of the show: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522 

Today on the episode we will be talking to Daren Fulwell, Network Automation Evangelist at IP Fabric. Daren is CCDE2015::41, CCIE 20443, member of the CCIE Advisory Council, host of #Init6, and my fellow Cisco Champion for the last few years.

With so much experience under his belt, in my opinion, Daren has his pick in whatever field he would choose to work on in network engineering. I asked Daren about his experience in networking engineering, what led him to IP Fabric, and all the cool projects he is working on.

Just prior to our scheduled interview, IP Fabric was named as one of the 'Cool Vendors in Network Automation' for 2022. Daren is kind enough to offer a lab license for our listeners.

Links

Connect with Daren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daren-fulwell/
Follow Daren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarenFulwell
IP Fabric: https://ipfabric.io/
IP Fabric YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/IPFabric
Init6: https://www.youtube.com/c/init6 
IP Fabric lab license: https://ipfabric.io/lab-licence-page/

--- Support the Show ---

Subscribe on Apple Podcast for Bonus Episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/network-automation-nerds-podcast/
Patreon of the show: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522

--- Stay in Touch with Us —

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

Do you want to learn, grow, and elevate your life and career in I.T.? Du'An Lightfoot, creator of the #LabEveryday is here to help. As Du'An would say, "We focus on enjoying the experience of learning, growing, and helping others as we go", he is here to do just that in this episode.

In this episode, Du'An talks about his background, his start in technology, his struggles and success, certification, cloud, networking, and many more.

Let's get to it!  

--- Show Links ---
Connect with Du’An on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanlightfoot/
Follow Du’An on Twitter: https://twitter.com/labeveryday
LabEveryday Blogs: https://www.labeveryday.com/blog
LabEveryday Meidum: https://labeveryday.medium.com/
LabEveryday YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LabEveryday
Website: https://www.labeveryday.com/
The Psychology of Money: https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness-ebook/dp/B084HJSJJ2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
The Sports Gene: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AEDDQKE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

--- Stay in Touch with Us ---
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

If you have even a slight interest in network automation, you must have heard of Ansible. Ansible is a modern, YAML-based automation tool built on top of the popular Python programming language. In this episode, we will be talking to James Freeman, co-author of Mastering Ansible, 4th Edition.

James is an accomplished IT consultant with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry with many years spent solving real-world enterprise problems using Ansible. He is a frequent speaker and presenter on various topics on Ansible at numerous conferences, such as AnsibleFest, and many local meetups.

James is here to share with us his experience in IT, lessons learned, latest Ansible technologies, and many more. Let's dive right in! 

--- Show Links ---

Connect with James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesfreeman959/
Follow James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesfreeman959
Mastering Ansible: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ansible-configuration-management-deployment/dp/1801818789/ref=asc_df_1801818789/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=532387267820&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3486108988379872527&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9033300&hvtargid=pla-1444342475189&psc=1
Ansible London Meeting Presentation by James: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bTG9e-Vbyk&t=814s
AnsibleFest Presentation by James: https://events.ansiblefest.redhat.com/widget/redhat/ansible21/sessioncatalog/session/1623422107732001AsQE
Ansible Documentation: https://docs.ansible.com/ 

--- Stay in Touch with Us ---
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

Today on the show, we will be talking to Daniel Teycheney. Daniel is based out of Melbourne Australia and works as a network automation engineer. If you have been following Daniel on Twitter or his blog, you would be amazed at the amount of quality content he has been producing.  Besides all the written contents, the last time I checked out Daniel’s GitHub page, as an open-source project maintainer he had over 200+ commits and 242 PRs by mid-February in 2022.

In this episode, Daniel will tell us about his content creation strategy, why he loves doing it, picking the right medium, and his workflow. I am excited to learn from him and will be applying some of the technics in my own workflow.

Let's dive in! 

--- Links ---

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielfjteycheney/
Follow Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielteycheney
Daniel’s Blog: https://blog.danielteycheney.com/
Daniel’s GitHub Page: https://github.com/writememe
Starting Your Network Automation Journey: https://blog.danielteycheney.com/posts/starting-your-network-automation-journey/
Daniel on [Heavy Networking Ep. 554]: https://packetpushers.net/podcast/heavy-networking-554-mistaking-commercial-software-for-a-security-blanket/
Daniel on [The Art of Network Engineering Ep. 21]: https://artofnetworkengineering.com/2020/12/09/ep-21-he-automates-a-lan-down-unda/

Hugo (Static Site Generator): https://gohugo.io/
Ansible x NAPALM - Multi Vendor Network Lifecycle Management: https://github.com/writememe/ansible-mel-meetup-2020
How to serve Batfish Data using FastAIP (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6LIxV3ODOQ 

--- Stay in Touch with Us ---

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522)

In this episode, I welcome back Stuart Clark to talk about this personal career journey which has taken from being a hairdresser for 14 years all the way to Senior Developer Advocate at Cisco. It is a story of lifelong learning, hard work, and a can-do attitude.

On a personal note, Stu has been a big supporter of my own career. He was one of the first people I asked to be on the show because I find his story to be inspirational. I can't wait to share his story with you! 

--- Links ---

Connect with Stuart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuarteclark/
Follow Stuart on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigevilbeard

--- Stay in Touch with Us ---

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=62594522)

Today on the show, we will be talking to Adam Byczkowski from Network to Code about code testing in network automation. This is an important topic that is often overlooked in Network Automation, especially if we are just getting our feet wet in the space. 

I was very happy to see Adam wrote about code testing in the network automation space via a 3-part blog series. I invited Adam on the show to talk about his journey, code testing, and testing in the network automation world. 

I know we will learn a lot from Adam. Let’s dive right in!

--- Show Notes Links ---

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-byczkowski-525568105/ 

Pytest in the Networking World (Parts 1 - 3):
https://blog.networktocode.com/post/pytest-in-the-networking-world/
https://blog.networktocode.com/post/pytest-in-the-netwoking-world-part-2/
https://blog.networktocode.com/post/pytest-in-the-netwoking-world-part-3/
NTC NetUtil (easy to understand tests): https://blog.networktocode.com/post/introducing-netutils/

Read Network to Code Blogs: https://blog.networktocode.com/

Closing the Loop on Testing Network Changes:
https://elegantnetwork.github.io/posts/closing-the-loop-testing/

Python Testing with pytest by Brian Okken: https://pragprog.com/titles/bopytest2/python-testing-with-pytest-second-edition/

Coverage.py: https://coverage.readthedocs.io/en/6.1.2/
pytest plugins: https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/how-to/plugins.html

Other Resources:
Pythontesting.net
Test and Code Podcast: Testandcode.com 

--- Stay in Touch with Us ---

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricChouNetworkAutomationNerds
Follow Eric on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ericchou