Networking teams have been able to accelerate their ability to provide network services by focusing on new initiatives that include CI/CD pipeline integration and infrastructure as code. This has improved both their efficiency and accuracy of network changes. However, they’re now trying to take the next logical step – adopting DevOps principles and processes and applying them to their automation infrastructure components.
As teams progress into this stage, they learn that a growing automation asset base (workflows, scripts, templates, etc.) presents the same challenges as overseeing a DevOps code base. It requires careful management, source control, versioning, and consistent deployment models to ensure the overall automation infrastructure is performing properly and in a scalable fashion. This means network teams should start managing their automation assets like DevOps teams manage their source code.
In this webinar, Morgan Stern, VP of Automation Strategy at Itential, and Mitch Veazy, Automation Engineer at Itential, demonstrate a proven framework on how to implement a CI/CD approach for automation and orchestration assets leveraging the Itential Automation Platform (IAP) and open source components. They also share and demo techniques and best practices for automation design and implementation that enables teams to maximize the benefits of incorporating these principles into their automation development processes.
Demo Notes
(So you can skip ahead, if you want.)
00:00 Introduction & Demo Overview
00:45 CI/CD Use Cases
02:28 Defining Automation Assets
03:46 Considerations for Building & Managing Automation Assets
07:00 Why You Should Adopt CI/CD Principles for Your Automation Assets
08:58 How Itential Helps Treat Your Automation Assets like Code
10:24 Demo Overview
12:42 Creating Automation in a Developer Environment
18:04 Promoting Automation Assets
20:22 Running Automation Assets & Data Gathering
23:24 Testing & Validation
28:07 Merging Automation & Bump Changes
