Practical strategies and techniques for automating network infrastructure As networks grow ever more complex, network professionals are seeking to automate processes for configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operation. Using automation, they aim to lower expenses, improve productivity, reduce human error, shorten time to market, and improve agility. In this guide, expert practitioner Ivo Pinto presents all the concepts and techniques you'll need to move your entire physical and virtual infrastructure towards greater automation and maximize the value it delivers. Writing for experienced professionals, the author reviews today's leading use cases for automation, compares leading tools, and presents a deep dive into using the open source Ansible engine to automate common tasks. You'll find everything you need: from practical code snippets to real-world case studies to a complete methodology for planning strategy. This guide is for everyone seeking to improve network operations and productivity, including system, network, storage, and virtualization administrators, network and security engineers, and many other technical professionals and managers. You can apply its vendor-neutral concepts throughout your entire environment-from servers to the cloud, switches to security. Explore modern use cases for network automation, and compare today's most widely used automation tools Capture essential data for use in network automation, using standard formats such as JSON, XML, and YAML Get more value from the data your network can provide Install Ansible and master its building blocks, including plays, tasks, modules, variables, conditionals, loops, and roles Perform common networking tasks with Ansible playbooks: manage files, devices, VMs, cloud constructs, APIs, and more See how Ansible can be used to automate even the largest global network architectures Discover how NetDevOps can transform your approach to automation--and create a new NetDevOps pipeline, step by step Build a network automation strategy from the ground up, reflecting lessons from the world's largest enterprises

Master a holistic approach to NetDevOps—from concepts to practical implementation This is your comprehensive, holistic, end-to-end practitioner's guide to all things NetDevOps: all you need to use NetDevOps techniques to enhance network agility, productivity, and value. Enterprise networking pioneers Ivo Pinto and Faisal Chaudhry introduce NetDevOps' origins, components, advantages, shortcomings, use cases, and adoption challenges. Next, they drill down into NetDevOps CI/CD pipelines and testing, Jenkins automation, EVE-NG clientless multivendor network emulation, and more from a vendor-neutral perspective. Automating and Orchestrating Networks with NetDevOps is for every network or cloud operator, administrator, engineer, architect, and developer who implements, manages, or maintains network infrastructure. You'll find everything from detailed syntax and reusable code examples to deployment best practices, culminating in a full walkthrough of building your own NetDevOps architecture. Throughout, review questions help you reinforce and verify your understanding. Whatever your background or environment, this guide will help you embark confidently on your own NetDevOps journey. Understand where NetDevOps excels (and where it doesn't) Explore the components of practical implementations, and how they fit together Plan for common challenges, decisions, and investments Implement efficient, automated CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins—with practical tooling and example code Use EVE-NG to create and configure virtual topologies for testing and verification Master proven NetDevOps architectural best practices from industry leaders Build your own architecture, step-by-step Address common use cases such as configuration changes and compliance verification Integrate NetDevOps with ChatOps, and interact with networks via Slack