How one can be a community engineer within the age of automation

I’ve been concerned with community engineering for the higher a part of 20 years now and I’ve noticed large adjustments within the trade throughout these twenty years, from Body Relay and ATM changing into out of date to Ethernet taking up and changing into a pervasive expertise. However moreover me getting older and completely different transport applied sciences going via existential crises, the largest improvement in all these years was the emergence of community automation and programmability. That is the change that has most likely affected probably the most what it means to be a community engineer lately.

Sure, completely different applied sciences and protocols come and go in classical community engineering, however automation requires a totally new set of abilities. These new abilities differ in complexity and usefulness from studying tips on how to write YAML recordsdata and dealing with Ansible, to writing HCL recordsdata for Terraform configuration, to being totally proficient in a programming language corresponding to Python or Golang. The premise and basis for all these new abilities comes from software program improvement. This has all the time been tangential to community engineering, however with the arrival of automation is taking a entrance row seat.

Relying on the scale of the networks and environments you’re engaged on, and the way your organization is organized, it is likely to be you that has to change into a proficient software program developer and produce automation into your group. Or, you might need to work with software program builders and clarify to them how the community is operating, what must be executed to automate your enterprise processes and workflows in a language and with ideas that they perceive and that they will simply flip into supply code.

You aren’t alone

If all of this sounds formidable to you, don’t despair, you aren’t alone in your automation journey. We’ve got a incredible neighborhood of engineers at completely different phases of their careers which might be very happy to share their exhausting realized automation classes with you. I host a weekly reside stream on Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT referred to as Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru that’s being broadcast reside and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn account.

In two latest episodes I’ve had the privilege of internet hosting Julio Gomez, Principal Gross sales Architect at Cisco. We’ve mentioned how functions have developed through the years – from monoliths to micro providers architectures, containerized functions and Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, telepresence (not the Cisco one), mirrord, Okteto, and extra. Most significantly, we talked about tips on how to be a community engineer on this new world surrounded by all these thrilling applied sciences. Listed below are hyperlinks the place you possibly can watch these recorded episodes:

Mark your calendars to tune in to the weekly reside stream

Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru
Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT
Broadcast reside and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn

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