The Fat Pipe - All Packet Pushers Pods

A major automation challenge is where the information describing your network should live. You might think that your network would be best described by the config files on your switches and routers.

Actually, that’s wrong. The configuration on the devices might–or might not–reflect what you intend the network to be. Plus, network device configurations aren’t easy to integrate with the rest of an IT provisioning process.

What you require to facilitate network automation is a single source of truth. A source of truth that’s programmatically accessible, reflects intended state, and enables others to stand up infrastructure correctly without you getting in the middle of every provisioning request.

Tim Schreyack joins us today to discuss a network automation solution using Ansible and Python, and of course, a single source of truth.

Tim is a senior sales engineer at Dell Networking and has a background in network engineering and automation. He’s not here as a Dell spokesperson, and this isn’t a sponsored show.

We discuss:

* Why repeatability is the goal, and your organization’s size doesn’t matter

* The pros and cons of using Ansible and Python as a singe source of truth

* Jinja templates

* Picking a database, and NetBox pros and cons

* Automation differences in greenfields and brownfields

* Where to start with automation

* More

Sponsor: Viavi Solutions

VIAVI Solutions is a network performance management leader enabling IT teams to understand user experience so they can solve performance problems fast. Learn more at viavisolutions.com/packetpushers.

Sponsor: ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes gives you performance visibility from every user to every app over any network, both internal and external, so you can migrate to the cloud, troubleshoot faster and deliver exceptional user experiences. Sign up for a free account at thousandeyes.com/packetpushers and choose a free ThousandEyes t-shirt.

Show Links:

Powering Your Automation: A Single Source of Truth – CHINOG – June 27, 2019 – YouTube

Powering Your Automation: A Single Source of Truth – NANOG – November 5, 2019 – YouTube

Tim Schreyack on LinkedIn

Heavy Networking 452: Using NetBox As A Source Of Networking Truth – Packet Pushers

Today's Day Two Cloud episode explores network automation through the lenses of infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines. As network automation permeates organizations, does it make sense for network engineers to adopt more developer-like processes, methods, and tools? Can you successfully automate without them? Our guests for this conversation, sponsored by Cisco, are Carl Moberg, Senior Director of Product Management at Cisco; and Kristian Larsson, who has dual roles at Cisco and Deutsche Telekom.

Today's Network Break analyzes an HPE/Cumulus Networks deal on Ethernet storage switches, yet another open-source network OS project from the Linux Foundation, Accenture's purchase of Symantec's security services biz from Broadcom, a Cisco reorganization of its enterprise networking businesses, and more tech and IT news.

On today's Tech Bytes podcast, sponsored by Silver Peak, we talk with Cushman & Wakefield about how the global real estate company is using SD-WAN to enable its cloud-first goals. Our guest is Chris Butcher, Platform Architect, Global Networks, Cloud and Perimeter Security at Cushman & Wakefield.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to blog more, or start a blog, this episode is for you.

Technical blogging comes with benefits. For one, writing about a subject helps you understand it better (and also helps you realize the limits of your knowledge).

Blogging can raise your profile. When you share information or experiences with a larger audience, you can develop a reputation for expertise. This higher profile may create  opportunities to speak at events, get access to conferences or early product releases, and maybe even get a better job.

A technical blog can serve as a kind of living resume that potential employers and recruiters can see to get a sense of your capabilities.

When you share technical information, troubleshooting tips, study hacks, analysis, and other content, you help other IT pros who may be looking for information. It’s also not uncommon that you’ll help yourself–more than one blogger has run into a problem, hit up Google, and found an old post with a solution.

Our guests for today’s show are John Mark Troyer, founder of the Influencer Marketing Council and TechReckoning; and Stephen Foskett, founder of Tech Field Day and GestaltIT.

We discuss:

* The motivations and purposes for blogging

* How to get started

* Favorite blogging tools and writing tips

* The “small b” approach to blogging (don’t chase metrics, not every post has to be epic, etc.)

* Whether to mix personal and professional writing

* More

Sponsor: Cradlepoint

The future of the WAN is wireless, but a wireless connection is only as good as the edge. Cradlepoint unlocks the power of advanced cellular through wireless edge solutions that are delivered the way you consume everything IT: as a service. Reliable. Elastic. Simple to manage from anywhere. Learn more about Cradlepoint’s cloud-managed LTE solutions at cradlepoint.com/packetpushers.

Sponsor: ThousandEyes

ThousandEyes gives you performance visibility from every user to every app over any network, both internal and external, so you can migrate to the cloud, troubleshoot faster and deliver exceptional user experiences. Sign up for a free account at thousandeyes.com/packetpushers and choose a free ThousandEyes t-shirt.

Show Links:

Tech Field Day

GestaltIT.com

Influencer Marketing Council

Techreckoning.com

Stephen Foskett on Twitter

Jon Mark Troyer on Twitter

Arse First Method of Technical Blogging [PDF/iPad/Kindle] – Greg Ferro

If you're looking for a way to bring IPv6 into your environment, the WLAN may be your best bet. Find out why in the latest episode of IPv6 Buzz with guest Jeffry Handal. Jeffry cut his teeth with an early v6 deployment on the wireless network of Louisiana State University (LSU). This WLAN serves 40,000 users and over 100,000 devices. He shares his experiences and talks about how vendor adoption of v6 had advanced since that deployment.

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast, Rob Hirschfeld joins us to examine the challenges of working in edge environments. Many of those challenges include the infrastructure itself: how to provision, configure, and operate equipment in remote locations, how to ensure logical and physical security, and how to manage it all remotely.

Based on what we know about Space Networks like Starlink, I propose that next generation cars won't use 5G. Its doesn't make sense to deal with telcos.

Software Defined Infrastrcture has changed the way we operate networks but little impact on the process of design or decision making. Doing the same old thing better isn't enough, enter Data Driven Infrastructure.

This is a special holiday episode of Day Two Cloud with guest Kelsey Hightower, a Kubernetes evangelist and contributor. We discuss the current state of Kubernetes and the future for this orchestration platform, including how it will address networking, should you get certified, and will Kubernetes eventually fade into the background as hidden infrastructure you don't have to think about so much.