Cisco DevNet Associate Exam Preparation 5: Infrastructure and Automation

This course provides an overview of infrastructure automation, including knowledge needed for the Infrastructure and Automation domain of the Cisco DevNet Associate certification.

Infrastructure automation is one of the hottest topics in network engineering. In this course, instructor Eric Chou provides a comprehensive overview of the different infrastructure automation frameworks, tools, and workflows. Eric covers topics like the difference between controller-level and device-level management, the value of model-driven programmability, and network simulation and testing tools. This course is also helpful to anyone looking to obtain knowledge required to pass the Cisco DevNet Associate certification exam. In particular, this course provides an overview of how to treat infrastructure as code, use the CI/CD pipeline, and work with different automation frameworks. Whether you’re a network engineer who wants to learn about software development, or a developer who wants to learn about network engineering, this course provides foundational knowledge in the important topic of infrastructure automation.

Introduction

• Cisco exam prep introduction

1. Model-Driven Programmability

• Learn about model-driven programmability
• Overview of the YANG models

2. Controller vs. Device-Level Automation

• Benefits of controller-level automation vs. device-level automation
• Learn to use Cisco VIRL
• Learn to use Cisco pyATS

3. Automation Tools Overview

• Overview of the Ansible automation tool
• Overview of the Puppet automation tool
• Overview of the Chef automation tool
• Overview of the Cisco NSO automation tool

4. Infrastructure as Code

• What is infrastructure as code?
• CI/CD pipeline with infrastructure automation

5. Workflow Automation Examples

• Cisco APIC and ACI Python example
• Ansible network automation example
• Bash script automation example

6. Infrastructure Automation Practices

• Learn about the code review process
• Understand sequence diagram for API calls
• Understand unified diff
• Compare RESTCONF vs. NETCONF query results

Conclusion

• Next steps