• Gain an overview of the skills you need to become a next-generation engineer
• Prepare to accelerate network automation in your organization
• Increase collaboration across internal and external teams using version control systems
• Earn 16 CE credits toward recertification

After taking this course, you should be able to:

• Articulate the role network automation and programmability play in the context of end-to-end network management and operations
• Define and differentiate between waterfall and agile software development methodologies
• Interpret and troubleshoot Python scripts with fundamental programming constructs built for network automation use cases
• Describe how DevOps principles, tools, and pipelines can be applied to network operations
• Understand the role of network automation development environments and associated technologies such as Python virtual environments, Vagrant, and Docker
• Understand and construct HTTP-based API calls to network devices
• Articulate the differences among and common use cases for XML, JSON, YAML, and protobuf
• Construct and interpret Python scripts using the Python requests module to automate devices that have HTTP-based APIs
• Understand the role YANG plays in network automation
• Understand that a number of tools exist to simplify working with YANG models
• Describe the functionality of RESTCONF and NETCONF and the differences between them
• Construct Ansible playbooks to configure network devices and retrieve operational state data from them
• Build Jinja2 templates and

• Examining Network Management and Operations
• Exploring Software Development Methodologies
• Using Python for Network Automation
• Describing NetDevOps: DevOps for Networking
• Managing Automation Development Environments
• Introducing HTTP Network APIs
• Reviewing Data Formats and Data Encoding
• Using Python Requests to Automate HTTP-Based APIs
• Exploring YANG
• Using YANG Tools
• Automating Model-Driven APIs with Python
• Introducing Ansible for Network Automation
• Templating Configurations with Jinja2

Lab outline

• Use Network Automation Scripts
• Enforce Python Fundamentals on the Interactive Interpreter
• Automate Networks with Netmiko
• Use the Git Version-Control System and Collaborate on an Internal Project
• Build Reproduceable Automation Environments
• Use HTTP-Based APIs with Postman
• Explore YAML and JSON Data
• Consume HTTP-Based APIs with Python Requests
• Explore YANG Tools
• Explore RESTCONF with Python
• Explore NETCONF with Python
• Configure Network Devices with Ansible
• Collect Network Data with Ansible
• Build and Deploy Configurations with Ansible

This course is designed primarily for customer engineers and systems engineers in the following job roles:

• Automation architect
• Automation engineer
• Consulting systems engineer
• DevOps engineer
• Network administrator
• Network architect
• Network consulting engineer
• Network design engineer
• Network engineer
• Network operator
• Network reliability engineer
• Sales engineer
• Site reliability engineer
• Systems engineer
• Technical solutions architect

This course would also be useful for network manager job roles such as:

• Application developer
• Collaboration developer
• Collaboration solutions architect
• IT director
• Mobile developer
• Network Operations Center (NOC) manager
• Software architect
• Web developer

Before taking this course, you should have the following knowledge and skills:

• Routing and switching including Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and basic configuration features such as interfaces, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and static routes
• Fundamentals of Python data structures and programming constructs such as loops, conditionals, and classes, or the equivalent of 3–6 months of experience writing Python scripts
• Basic Linux commands for navigating the file system and executing scripts
• Knowledge of working with text editors