Automation

A Logging Strategy: Syslog and Webhooks

What to log, at what severity, and where — syslog for the durable record, webhooks for real-time alerts, and per-handler routing that pages humans only for what matters.

Model-Driven Telemetry

Stream YANG-modeled operational state instead of polling — sensor path, subscription, cadence, and a working IOS XE dial-out subscription into a Telegraf collector.

Generating YAML and JSON from a YANG Model

Walk a YANG schema top-down to build a valid RESTCONF body — container → object, list → array, and the module-prefix rules that keep it off a 400.

Driving Automation from a Source of Truth

NetBox/Nautobot for infrastructure data, Git for config — and the pull → render → deploy → verify loop that reconciles drift.

Running Automation Tooling with Docker Compose

Read and write a Compose file — services, networks, volumes — and wait for readiness with healthchecks, not just start order.

Network Simulation with Cisco Modeling Labs

Test changes against virtual Cisco topologies before production — drive CML from Python with virl2_client and version the topology in Git.

Building a GitLab CI/CD Pipeline

A four-stage network pipeline — build, prevalidate, deploy, postvalidate — with manual gates, protected environments, and runner tags.

Diagnosing a Failing GitLab CI/CD Pipeline

Read the log to the first error and classify it: missing dependency, version clash, failed test, or a stuck runner.

Version Control with Git

The three areas, branching and merging, conflicts, cherry-pick, and reset vs. revert for shared history.

Network Automation with Ansible

Configure Cisco IOS XE with idempotent resource modules.

Network Automation with Terraform

Declarative, stateful IaC for Cisco IOS XE — plan, apply, and drift detection.

Network Automation with RESTCONF

Drive YANG-modeled data over HTTP (RFC 8040) with curl and Python requests.

Network Automation with Python

Netmiko, NAPALM, and ncclient — push and read config, structure CLI output, and scale with concurrency.

Selecting the Right Automation Approach

Match the requirement to IaC, low-code/no-code, or custom Python — with a decision heuristic and worked scenarios.

Consuming REST APIs at Scale

Persistent auth, pagination, 429 backoff, idempotent retries, webhooks, and ETag caching against Cisco controllers.