At Cisco Live US 2022, in glittering Las Vegas, IP Fabric had the pleasure of hosting Network to Code at our booth to showcase the integration of Nautobot ChatOps with our network assurance capability, with the result of making invaluable network insights easily accessible to teams that need them.

Christian Adell from Network to Code Presents Nautobot

We’re bringing this showcase to your screens with a brand-new webinar at the end of September, getting into the details of just how this integration can help you create a holistic network automation solution. Read on for a preview of what you can expect in the webinar, hosted by Paddy Kelly, Managing Consultant at Network to Code, and Daren Fulwell, Product Evangelist at IP Fabric.

What is your observed network state, how can you get an accurate representation of it?

Your observed network state is the very real inventory, configuration, forwarding behavior, and topology of your network – at a particular point in time. In most cases, we track this stuff manually, in spreadsheets, Word documents, and Visio diagrams with data gathered manually or using custom scripts. So, we need to trust that every time a change happens in the network that the responsible person ensures that the documentation is updated immediately and to a consistent level of detail.

That’s no way to prepare to make confident decisions about an enterprise network.

With IP Fabric’s automated network assurance platform, network snapshots taken on your schedule or on-demand ensure that you always have an accurate, up-to-date visualization of your actual network state as it is. This allows you to answer the question “what changed?” easily from day to day. With Nautobot ChatOps, you can ensure you have access to this information through the chat platform of your preference (e.g., MS Teams, Slack, Webex, and Mattermost) making the wealth of knowledge contained in your network snapshot readily available to all teams who need it.

What about intended network state?

With your observed network state taken care of, you know where you are coming from. Next up, you need to know where you are going. This is your intended network state: a set of business outcomes translated to an ideal network state that would support this and contained within a network source of truth that you can measure your actual network state against. Having these two elements in place means that you have a goal to meet and a benchmark of where you are so that each decision about your network can be made with the motivation to move your network state closer to your goal.

In the upcoming webinar, our presenters will show how Nautobot and IP Fabric integrate to support the pursuit of a single, aligned source of truth. The webinar will showcase and discuss the Nautobot Single Source of Truth application that allows users to synchronize their data between IP Fabric and Nautobot—in the direction that makes sense for their business.

How can this data help your entire organization?

Security operations teams, cloud teams, or even leadership often need answers about the state of the network, which can materially affect their interests. Without a self-service way of accessing this network data, they must go through the network team, pulling focus and taking time away from projects and workflows. Not to mention that in our continuously globalized work environments, this significantly hampers asynchronous work.

And how does that collaboration work?

If you could ask your network anything, what would be your first question? That answer likely depends on what the latest incoming high-priority trouble ticket was. Where do you find a particular PC? Can it reach the application the user needs to access for their day-to-day work? Are there any issues with routing protocols stopping it from talking to the services it needs?

Do you need to identify the location of a host on your network and detail how it is connected? Use the /ipfabric find-host along with an IP or MAC address to get host information and outline key components of the host’s entry point onto the network.

Assessing what devices are reaching end of life for network refresh planning? Get an accurate and up-to-date network inventory using /ipfabric get-inventory and filter inventory assets based on site, model, vendor, or platform.

This is just a glimpse into the possibilities – you can visit the Nautobot ChatOps plugin repository to suggest more commands, create a feature request or discussion, or even open a Pull Request!

Inject automation for a new way of operating the network.

With IP Fabric and Nautobot ChatOps, you can get the answer to all this and more – all within your preferred chat platform.

The Nautobot ChatOps Framework provides a way to efficiently communicate and collaborate with Operational Support Systems and IT tools. IP Fabric supports complex multi-vendor network discovery and gives full visibility into inventory, config, topology, and behavior. Whoever needs these answers can easily get them without reliance on your network team. Democratizing important network data by making it easy to access can improve efficiency and foster harmony across your organization.

Links

• Nautobot IP Fabric ChatOps
• Nautobot ChatOps
• Nautobot IP Fabric SSoT
• Nautobot SSoT
• IP Fabric
• Nautobot