The Cisco Live 2016 DevNet Springboard!
Saturday, and Sunday leading up to Cisco Live 2016, DevNet put on a “Springboard” event. With room for 120 people it was filled to capacity almost immediately on being announced. It was a concentrated two day event with a ‘listen and learn and then put it into practice’ format, acting as the perfect springboard into Cisco Live for anyone wanting to understand the programming interfaces needed to manage their network controllers and devices.
We started off looking at the Coding 101 and 102 learning labs, and moved on to cover things like NETCONF, RESTCONF, NX-OS and APIC-EM. It was a virtual feast of DNA and Cisco API learning!
We had a stack of Cisco experts to help everyone learn the various topics. Below, is a picture of Cisco DevNet evangelist @SteveSfartz helping some of the Springboarders with their hands-on labs.
Feedback from the Spring-boarders
We got a bunch of feedback from the springboarders. Self-appraisal of their understanding of DNA before the session was, “Not so Good”. After the session, this changed to, “Good” or “Excellent”. The "Bringing it all Together" session generating “Excellent” results for almost everyone!
I spoke with Terry Slattery in the Learning Labs area of the DevNet zone on Monday after the Springboard event. Terry was particularly happy with Adam’s asynchronous API section. This is strong feedback when you learn a little bit about Terry. Terry was the first Non-Cisco Employee to attain CCIE certification! Check out Terry in the CCIE Hall of Fame! Terry is, again, leading the way on the journey for network professionals.
Highlights, created by Adam Radford!
One of the highlights of the event was when Adam Radford explained how asynchronous REST calls work with the APIC-EM controller. To be short, what happens is you do a POST to tell the controller create something (like a PathTrace). It kicks off a job in the controller and you get a “taskId” back. Then, you use a GET with that taskId in order to get the results. So, you’re not getting the results back instantly, you have to ask for them.
Below you can see an example of the POST command in action and that result. Note that the taskId is in quotes and starts with “c789”
POST:
RESULT:
Next, you can see the GET command in action and that result.
GET:
RESULT:
Get Involved!
As we all move forward in this app driven economy where digital disruption is the norm, it is becoming clearer and clearer that network professionals would be well served by adding some network programming skills to their resume if they aren’t already there. DevNet is here to help.
One of the best places you can start is in our Learning Paths for Network Engineers. If you are an application developer, we have a Learning Path for you as well.
If you’re not sure exactly what you are interested in, but want to check it out, try just visiting DevNet and browsing. If you think you are interested in something like our Digital Network Architecture (DNA), check out our communities and join up. Connect with us!
Remember, Cisco DevNet is the place to be for anything developer at Cisco. And, we want to help you learn, code, get inspired and connect!
Thanks for reading,
@coggerin