The Network Automation Journey
by Tony Bourke
TechnologyE · Explicit
Latest episode
How Hard Can It Be? Simplicity and Network Operations
How Hard Can It Be? Simplicity and Network Operations
About this podcast
This is a (probably) limited series where Tony Bourke, a networking instructor (Arista, Cisco, etc.) talks in a vendor-neutral way about the process of network automation, the basic concepts, and where everything falls into place.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 54 episodes
- How Hard Can It Be? Simplicity and Network Operations · 9 minIn this episode I talk about making technically inferior choices because it makes better operational sense.
- Intent and Natural Languages · 3 minIn this episode I discuss the use case (or lack thereof) for using natural language in network configuration. (Hint, I don't think natural language is a good fit for network…
- There Can Be Only One: The Highlander Principle · 6 minThe source of truth is the source of truth. There can only be one place to look for information or to set information.
- Ansible or Skip and Go Right To Python? · 12 minWhat should you learn? Python? Should you skip Ansible for Python? I discuss all of this in this episode.
- Are Traditional Networking Jobs No More? · 6 minYeah, I think network automation is now just part of being a network administrator.
- What the &#@! Is A Tenant? · 7 minIn this episode I talk about the concept of a tenant as it relates to network automation (and networking in general).
- Finding the Time To Automate When You're Already Underwater · 9 minYou're slammed, tickets piling up, deadlines slipping, you're barely keeping your head above water. And some Youtubers are telling you that you should automate? In this economy?…
- Network Automation Platform Wishlist (Part 1) · 22 minWhat would a replacement for Ansible look like? What do we want in a network automation platform that would replace Ansible?
- Ansible: No Commit Confirm? · 8 minIn this episode I talk about the lack of commit/confirm in many of the NOS modules.
- What Is The Goal of Network Automation/NetDevOps · 9 minIt's easy to be overwhelmed and see all these network automation tools and wonder... what is even the goal? The tools are there to help us achieve our goals, they're not the goal…
- Push Configs from Data Models to Configs: The Genesis Torpedo Method · 9 minIn this episode I talk about my preference for generating a new config and replacing the entirety of the old config, every time, much like the Genesis Torpedo from Star Trek II…
- Throwing More Shade at YANG · 10 minI don't like YANG for configuring devices (and I'm going to tell you allll about it).
- Don't Add Meetings/Committees To Your Change Control Process, Add Autotmation · 9 minMore meetings, more committees, more reviews isn't going to deliver more reliable network changes. While a formalized process and policies for network changes is important, you…
- How Automation Affects Design (Like Choosing Routing Protocols) · 9 minToday's topic is how automation has made choosing things like routing protocols very different than they were maybe 10 years ago.
- Ansible Problems Summer 2025 · 8 minIn this episode I warn people about issues that have cropped up with the network automation modules/collections/roles that got broken with the new versions of Ansible (Ansible…
- It's Time To Retire The Term SDN (Software Defined Networking) · 15 minIn this longer episode, I share my thoughts on the term "Software Defined Networking" (SDN) and why it should be retired as a term.
- Declarative vs Imperative Automation · 9 minHere I talk about declarative vs imperative approaches to network automation.
- Getting Syntax onto Switches (No YANG) · 12 minIn this episode I talk about my thoughts on using OpenConfig versus managing the device in a more native way.
- Too Many New Things At Once · 5 minIn this episode I talk about the pitfall of throwing too many new things at once to someone who's just learning network automation. Keeping it simple and using a layered approach…
