It seems everyone is talking about the modern network engineer and the transition we all will have to undergo. I am here to say it should not be scary or intimidating. It should be a fun opportunity to learn and think differently about networking.
Think about how many hours you’ve spent on repetitive tasks or commands you wished were there.
Now is our time to leverage API’s like NETCONF and RESTCONF to get the information we want in a format that’s easily manipulated.
- Now is our time to let the machines:
- shut/no shut
- bounce dot1x after someone came back from working from home so long his machine cert expired
- reapply port-security for the manager that continues to rearrange her office and forget that it matters where she plugs in.
- kick of ip-sla to get a more descriptive answer than “slow” for an application performance
- find all the devices affected by a field notice
- Feel like you are giving the same message on troubleshooting IPSEC to your junior engineers?
- Want to get alerted when the configuration drifts from the gold config on your network?
Maybe your use cases are different from the ones I remember, but I’d love to help demonstrate how Network Programmability can save your sanity (and I can’t wait to hear your ideas).
Beyond the initial solutions to repetitive tasks and notifications, there is the concept of abstraction and simplification called Infrastructure as Code. We can leverage Ansible and Puppet to deploy your validated solutions and/or simplified network services any number of times with a simple execution and instantiating variables on a set of templates.
I am very excited to get to meet many of you in the coming weeks at Cisco Live in Berlin and Melbourne. I will be delivering sessions on NetDevOps (DevNet-1002), Network Programmability with Python (DevNet-2449), SDN (TECSDN-2602 and TECSDN3602), and Programmability in DNA (TECCRS-2700) in Berlin and NetDevOps (DevNet-1002) and Programmability in DNA (TECCRS-2700) in Melbourne. I will also be lurking around the DevNet Zone ready to pounce on anyone willing to listen 
I hope to see you there and as always feel free to reach out to me on twitter @sdn_dude.
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