Network Automation with Nautobot : Adopt a Network Source of Truth and a Data-Driven Approach to Networking.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Edelman, Jason.

Contributor:

Matthews, Glenn.

VanDeraa, Josh.

Celenza, Ken.

Adell, Christian.

Haas, Brad.

Culver, Bryan.

Anderson, John.

Snider, Gary.

Bushong, Mike.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Computer networks.

Computer network protocols.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (816 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Birmingham : Packt Publishing, Limited, 2024.

Summary:

Transform the way your network teams think about and deploy enterprise network automation through the power of Nautobot's open-source platform Key Features Learn how documenting your network in Nautobot can accelerate your network automation journey Apply NetDevOps to your network by leveraging Nautobot as a network source of truth Minimize tool sprawl by extending, using, or building Nautobot Apps Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book Description Nautobot enables network teams to build a scalable and extensible network source of truth that provides a foundation to power any network automation stack. With the help of this guide, you'll learn how to deploy, manage, and integrate Nautobot as a source of truth and network automation platform. As you progress, you'll learn what a network source of truth is, the relationship between data and network automation, and network data models. You'll also gain a broad understanding of Nautobot and its robust features that allow maximum flexibility. A dedicated section will show you how to construct a single source of truth with Nautobot and help you explore its programmatic APIs, including REST APIs, GraphQL, webhooks, and Nautobot Job Hooks. Later, you'll develop custom data models and custom apps for Nautobot and experience its extensibility and powerful developer API. In the last part of this book, you'll discover how to deploy configuration compliance and automated remediation once Nautobot is deployed as a network source of truth. By the end of this book, you'll be able to design and manage Nautobot as a network source of truth, understand its key features, and extend Nautobot by creating custom data models and apps that suit your network and your team. What you will learn Understand network sources of truth and the role they play in network automation architecture Gain an understanding of Nautobot as a network source and a network automation platform Convert Python scripts to enable self-service Nautobot Jobs Understand how YAML files in Git can be easily integrated into Nautobot Get to grips with the NetDevOps ecosystem around Nautobot and its app ecosystem Delve into popular Nautobot Apps including Single Source of Truth and Golden Config Who this book is for This book is for network engineers, network automation engineers, and software engineers looking to support their network teams by building custom Nautobot Apps. A basic understanding of networking (e.g. CCNA) and knowledge of the fundamentals of Linux, Python programming, Jinja2, YAML, and JSON are needed to get the most out of this book.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright and credits

Foreword

Contributors

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Introduction to Source of Truth and Nautobot

Chapter 1: Introduction to Nautobot

Introduction to network automation

What is network automation?

Network automation use cases

Why automate your network?

Persona-driven network automation

Industry trends

Understanding SoT

Defining SoT

Approaches to SoT

SoT tools and products

Nautobot overview

Nautobot use cases

Network SoT

Network automation platform

Nautobot ecosystem

Summary

Chapter 2: Nautobot Data Models

Nautobot data models overview

Data model summary

Network device inventory data models

Devices

Device components

Device types

Manufacturer

Roles and statuses

Platform

Virtual chassis

Device redundancy groups

Interface redundancy groups

Racks

Locations

Location type

Tenants

IPAM data models

Namespaces

Prefixes

IP addresses

RIRs

VRFs

Route targets

VLANs and VLAN groups

Circuits data models

Circuits

Circuit terminations

Circuit types

Circuit providers

Provider networks

Data model extensibility

Custom fields

Computed fields

Relationships

Config contexts

Custom data models

Part 2: Getting Started with Nautobot

Chapter 3: Installing and Deploying Nautobot

Nautobot architecture overview

Installing Nautobot

Getting Nautobot up and ready on Ubuntu

Installing dependencies

Installing the Nautobot application

Launching Nautobot

Nautobot worker

Nautobot web service

Running Nautobot as Linux services

Loading data into Nautobot

Using the graphical user interface

Chapter 4: Understanding the User Interface and Bootstrapping Nautobot

Understanding the navigation and UI.

Navigation menu

Nautobot home page and panels

Footer navigation

Table views

Detailed views

Managing inventory and bootstrapping your first installation

Identifying your data

Organizational data

Device data

Chapter 5: Configuring Nautobot Core Data Models

IP address management in Nautobot

VLANs

Configuring IP address management in Nautobot

IPAM configuration for Wayne Enterprises

Modeling HA and virtual devices

Device Redundancy Groups

Key differences between device redundancy and virtual chassis

Setting up a firewall redundancy group for Wayne Enterprises in Nautobot

Interface Redundancy Groups

Cabling and power management

Cables

Incorporating power management with cabling

Power panels

Power feeds

Understanding the blast radius through comprehensive data

Secrets management

Why use secrets?

Core concepts

Secrets versus Secrets Groups in Nautobot

Security considerations

Accessing secrets in code

Nautobot Secrets Providers app (plugin) overview

Using Notes, Tags, Changelog, and Filter forms

Notes

Tags

Change log

Filter forms

Best practices for inventory management

Chapter 6: Using Nautobot's Extensibility Features

Statuses

Managing statuses

Applying a status

Use cases for statuses

Best practices for statuses

Managing tags

Applying a tag

Use cases for tags

Best practices for tags

Managing custom fields

Diving into custom field attributes

Validation rules

Custom field choices

Applying a custom field

Use cases for custom fields

Best practices for custom fields

Managing and applying computed fields

Computed field template context.

Use cases for computed fields

Best practices for computed fields

Custom links

Managing and applying custom links

Use cases for custom links

Best practices for custom links

Export templates

Default export templates

Use cases for export templates

Managing and applying export templates

Best practices for export templates

Exploring the config context hierarchy

Managing and applying config contexts

Use cases for config contexts

Config context schemas

Git as a data source

Managing and applying Git data sources

Use cases for data sources

Best practices for data sources

Use cases for relationships

Managing and applying relationships

Creating a relationship

Dynamic groups

Use cases for dynamic groups

Managing and applying dynamic groups

Best practices for dynamic groups

Chapter 7: Managing and Administering Nautobot

Administration with the Admin UI

User, group, and permissions management

Groups

Users

Permissions enforcement

Exploring Nautobot's settings

Understanding setting precedence

Setting banner and support messages

Adding your company's logos and branding

Customizing pagination

Preferred primary IP version

Handling logs

Customizing sanitizer patterns

Common settings

Advanced settings

Setting up and using NAPALM integration

Exploring nautobot-server CLI commands

Creating a superuser account

Exporting and importing data

Cleaning up old scheduled jobs

Retracing corrupted/missing cable paths

Getting help

Exploring the Nautobot Shell

Working with objects

Monitoring Nautobot metrics

Upgrading Nautobot

Troubleshooting Nautobot

Performing a health check

Troubleshooting the configuration

Debugging Nautobot

Summary.

Part 3: Network Automation with Nautobot

Chapter 8: Learning about Nautobot APIs - REST, GraphQL, and Webhooks

Technical requirements

Nautobot REST APIs

Nautobot's interactive API documentation

Understanding Nautobot APIs

API authentication

Using the API with Python

API tips

pynautobot

GraphQL with Nautobot

GraphQL primer

GraphiQL

GraphQL queries with Python

GraphQL versus REST

Webhooks

Exploring webhooks

Example - using a Webhook to trigger an Ansible AWX playbook

Chapter 9: Understanding Nautobot Integrations for NetDevOps Pipelines

Exploring pynautobot

Installing pynautobot

Getting started

Retrieving objects

Updating an object

Deleting an object

Creating an object

Working with Nautobot Apps

Using GraphQL with pynautobot

Using pynautobot to get the next available IP address

Exploring the Nautobot Ansible Collection

Installing the collection

Reading data with Ansible

Ansible write operations

Exploring Ansible inventory sources

Using Nornir Nautobot

Installing Nornir Nautobot

Exploring Nautobot Docker containers

Exploring the Nautobot Go library

Introducing the Nautobot Terraform provider

Chapter 10: Embracing Infrastructure as Code with Nautobot, Git, and Ansible

Setting up the environment

Network topology

Linux host

Ansible

Nautobot

The book's Git repo

Adding data to Nautobot with Ansible

Setting up a dynamic inventory

Backing up network devices

Performing a config replace with Nautobot, NAPALM, and Ansible on Arista and Juniper devices

Performing config changes with Nautobot and Ansible for Cisco IOS devices

Performing config changes with Nautobot and Ansible for Cisco NX-OS devices.

Managing data with config contexts and using Git

Nautobot jobs versus Ansible playbooks

Chapter 11: Automating Networks with Nautobot Jobs

Nautobot Jobs overview

Introduction to the Django ORM

Learning about the Nautobot Shell and ORM

Reading data

Adding and updating data

Deleting data

Adding Jobs to Nautobot

Synchronizing Jobs into Nautobot from a Git repository

Distributing Jobs as part of a Nautobot app

Mounting or placing Jobs directly in JOBS_ROOT

Creating your first Nautobot Job

"Hello World" Nautobot Job

Breaking down and building a Nautobot Job

Adding dynamic dropdowns to your job

Using Jobs to populate data in Nautobot

Converting Python scripts into Nautobot Jobs

Diving into even more Job features

Job buttons

Job Hooks

Job scheduling

Job approvals

The Jobs API

Job permissions

Chapter 12: Data-Driven Network Automation Architecture

Data-driven network automation architecture

Evolution of managed networks

Manually managed networks

Power tool automated networks

Legacy and domain network management managed networks

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) automated networks

Nautobot automated networks

SoT with Nautobot

Integrations and extensibility

SoT life cycle

Nautobot enablers for SoT

Automation and orchestration

Understanding workflows

Nautobot enablers for automation and orchestration

APIs - REST, GraphQL, and Webhooks

Modern network monitoring - telemetry and observability

Data enrichment

Data normalization

Data collection

Closed loop network automation

User interactions

Part 4: Nautobot Apps

Chapter 13: Learning about the Nautobot App Ecosystem

Nautobot Apps overview

Why Nautobot Apps?

Flexibility

Access to SoT data.

Accelerated development.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Security considerations

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781837634514

1837634513

OCLC:

1433204696