In this episode, I share my thoughts on what constitutes a network controller. Back in the early 2010s, it was thought to be the way devices had their forwarding tables configured. Now it's how a devices configuration state is configured.

What was automation like in the past?

Well, it was mostly non-existent in most of the networking world. But we did do automation in the server world, but it was quite different than it is today.

In this episode I talk about skillsets that I've picked up outside of the networking world that have really helped me out.

Here is just a quick talk about some of the history of network automation, at least from what I've seen in 25 years of server and network administration.

A great question from Twitter: "Any tips for leveraging Ansible in a team environment". In this episode I answer that question with what I've learned.

Coder: Essentially VS Code in webapp form: https://coder.com/

In this episode I talk about open-source versus closed-source projects.

A recent discussion had me thinking about the two common uses for the term "CLI" (Command Line Interface, of coures) with regards to network automation: One is the configuration method (as opposed to API or GUI), and the other is the configuration state (CLI syntax, such as running-config on Cisco/Arista).

Recently RedHat has been making some decisions that has affected a large percentage of its user base. In this episode, I share my thoughts from a network automation perspective.

In this short episode, I talk about making your own platform versus using an existing platform/framework.

An example would be writing your own Python automation platform, versus using something like Nornir (which is a platform plus some Python) or Ansible.

I talk about why it's usually a good idea to use an existing platform versus making your own.

I saw a comment on a network automation forum, and while the poster made a lot of great points, there was one point I disagreed with: That DevOps practices are a necessary component on network automation. While I think there are some aspects that are important, going full CI/CD pipeline isn't necessary. Here I give my quick thoughts on this subject.