The Ultimate Guide to NetDevOps

Most of us are probably familiar with the massive shift towards DevOps within the software development world.

The idea of streamlining and automating through Agile development processes, along with creating shared responsibility across siloed business units, is a familiar one. But the concept of NetDevOps–using DevOps concepts in a network context–might be new to some.

While it’s lesser known than using DevOps principles in other areas, such as development or security, NetDevOps continues to grow as the way of the future – a new operational model for managing networks and network automation.

Why? Because network teams in today’s fast-paced businesses need the same level of reusable, scalable, and software-defined automation that DevOps teams have. And without introducing some form of automation and scalability, teams will find themselves performing a significant amount of manual tasks to manage their network operations, leading to wasted resources and time, not to mention the risk of human error that often leads to some form of network outage.

A non-DevOps approach to network ops usually focuses around tools and lacks traceability, approvals, testing, and collaboration. It also increases the risk of outages, performance degradations, and security vulnerabilities. NetDevOps helps tackle these issues head-on.

What Is NetDevOps?

NetDevOps follows many of the same principles that other DevOps approaches embrace.

It solves many of the problems that network teams face today like inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and the risk of errors during deployments. We saw many of these problems addressed in development lifecycles with DevOps, which is why the same principles are now being used within the network management domain as well!

An ideal NetDevOps approach applies the tenets of DevOps in a few ways…

• Version Control. Networks are managed in central repositories with Git. All software artifacts–configurations, YAML data files, Jinja2 templates, Dockerfiles, etc.–are versioned.
• Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD). Changes to the network automation stack and the network itself are tested and released with automated processes. They happen efficiently in an agile CI/CD pipeline, so team members don’t have to waste time and resources by managing changes and performing tests manually.
• Open Source. Network teams use some level of open source to complement, augment, or power their network automation solutions. Open source continues to pave the way across all industries, and networking is no different. It enables innovation, flexibility, and control on the network automation journey.

To learn about building a NetDevOps platform and tooling, read our blog NetDevOps Concepts – Minimum Viable Product.

NetDevOps Challenges

However, today’s landscape of network management tools can cause some issues for teams who are working towards NetDevOps. As great as it sounds, NetDevOps is still uncharted waters for many organizations. It can be a difficult, time-consuming process to streamline and automate your network operations. A few of the biggest NetDevOps challenges that teams often face include:

Unstandardized Data

If a network team hasn’t taken the efforts to standardize their data, they’ll have a hard time creating automation and NetDevOps processes. It’s impossible to manage what you don’t know, especially when it comes to the multiple moving parts and complexities that you’ll find in a network.

Without a centralized knowledge of which data exists, there will be an inherent lack of trust in network data. There’s also the possibility of redundant data sets, which is also impossible to manage. Many of today’s network operations teams find themselves trying to work with numerous spreadsheets, dealing with repeated lines and unnecessary or stale information. When this is the case, it’s extremely difficult for them to transition into a NetDevOps approach.

Tool Limitations

Teams can accidentally paint themselves into a corner by using a limited number of tools and solutions. Network operations are complex, sometimes encompassing several thousand devices across a large enterprise. And using a tools-first approach (aka buying tools before you know what you’re getting yourself into) can cause limitations as your network systems continue to grow. Niche tools tend to stunt the growth of your NetDevOps program. Plus, scaling your networking infrastructure with paid models gets expensive quickly.

Lack of Expertise

Some enterprises want to implement a NetDevOps approach, but don’t have the in-house experts to do so. And if your teams attempt to implement network automation and streamline processes without the right expertise, they could end up causing more harm than help. The results might even look like the pre-NetDevOps days. When daily network automation tasks aren’t implemented correctly, they still steal resources away from high-value strategic projects.

NetDevOps Solutions

To respond to these challenges, your teams need to take on a data-first approach to NetDevOps.

In other words, it’s all about creating a centralized Source of Truth for your data, then going from there. Teams also need to bring the right people, processes, and technologies into their NetDevOps projects. This means being willing to use open source solutions, tapping into the growing community of network operations experts, and possibly finding service providers who can partner with your organization.

What Is a Network Source of Truth (SoT)?

A network Source of Truth is the centralized data repository that defines the desired state of your network. It’s a big-picture view of your entire network and all of the devices connected to it–ultimately, the North Star of your entire NetDevOps approach.

Establishing an SoT should be the first step of your process. Without it, your network team won’t know which data to automate and streamline in the first place.

Nautobot

Nautobot is an extensible and flexible Network Source of Truth that is the cornerstone of any network automation architecture. At its core, Nautobot is a Source of Truth that defines the intended state of the network.

Nautobot enables strict adherence to data standards, allowing users to define business rules on the network data that is stored within Nautobot. Nautobot also allows organizations to add custom fields and custom data models, and to create their own unique relationships between data stored in Nautobot, showcasing its flexibility.

Introducing Network Automation as a Service

But how does your team actionably put all of these elements into practice?

Network Automation as a Service (NAaaS) was built to help simplify and accelerate the adoption of NetDevOps. NAaaS includes deploying a scalable Source of Truth (SoT), introducing the best-of-class open source tools into your processes, and actively deploying actual network automation workflows on top of the platform.

Network Automation as a Service can provide elements including:

• Source of Truth (SoT), used as the foundation for network data and to drive automation.
• Automation Engine, for deploying and pushing changes to the network, as well as collecting diagnostics and troubleshooting.
• Telemetry and Analytics, to collect, analyze, visualize, and alert across multiple domains of the infrastructure providing the foundation for closed-loop automation.
• Orchestration System, for defining advanced and auto-remediation workflows, then executing them across the full automation stack.
• User Interactions, for leveraging the right tools that are already being used within the organizations, such as ITSM (e.g., ServiceNow) or chat (e.g., Slack/MS Teams).
• External Integrations, especially for APIs (read/write operations) and webhooks (notifications).

Network to Code: Your Partner in NetDevOps

Network to Code’s approach to Network Automation as a Service (NAaaS) combines the most open and extensible Source of Truth with automated workflows, deployed by industry experts to ensure the success of your network automation initiatives.

We aim to free up enterprise teams from performing manual tasks and bring the best of DevOps into your network operations. While other vendors lock you into their products, we embrace the NetDevOps approach, rejecting that notion. NAaaS with Network to Code allows you and your teams to focus your efforts on strategic projects that drive the business forward, opening the door to superior customer experiences, increased innovation and reliability, and an improved security posture.