Embracing connectivity, automation, and innovation throughout distributors.
February is the month of affection and friendship. At Cisco DevNet, we used that spirit as inspiration to rejoice one thing we care deeply about: constructing significant connections throughout the networking ecosystem. The Month of Sensible Connections marketing campaign explored how automation and programmability can carry completely different distributors collectively via open requirements, shared tooling, and sensible workflows.
Throughout 4 movies, every paired with its personal code repository, we showcased vendor-agnostic approaches to community automation. From scripting fundamentals to agentic AI workflows, the Month of Sensible Connections delivered sensible concepts that can assist you begin or strengthen your multi-vendor automation journey.
Episode 1: Loving All Distributors
Good relationships begin when everybody agrees on the best way to speak to one another.
On this episode, we launched the best way to use Cisco Crosswork Community Companies Orchestrator (NSO) to drag and commit configurations throughout multi-vendor environments. One RESTCONF API, zero vendor drama. We additionally demonstrated two light-weight GitHub Copilot brokers designed that can assist you uncover the right configuration URIs primarily based on the Community Factor Driver (NED) of your chosen platform.
Automation works finest when instruments communicate a typical language. Generally the strongest connections come from studying the best way to collaborate past acquainted boundaries.
Episode 2: Select Your Love Language
There are a lot of methods to specific your affection for automation.
On this episode, we explored three approaches: Python scripting, Ansible playbooks, and CI/CD pipelines. Whereas every workflow has its personal type, they share the identical basis: OpenConfig as a vendor-agnostic information mannequin and gNMI because the protocol that enhances it finest.
Irrespective of which toolchain you favor, open requirements enable consistency throughout environments and groups. The message is easy: your workflow could be private, however your basis needs to be common.
Episode 3: Belief Points
Automation solely works should you belief what it does.
On this episode, we explored the open-source Robotic Framework and expanded it right into a vendor-agnostic testing framework tailor-made for networking. By creating customized Python key phrases and leveraging the OpenConfig and gNMI mixture as soon as once more, we demonstrated how automated validation can turn out to be a pure a part of community operations.
Testing transforms automation from experimentation into reliability. Belief will not be assumed in automation. It’s repeatedly verified.
Episode 4: Intentions Matter
One of the best connections flip conversations into outcomes.
Within the remaining episode, we constructed an AI agent to allow ChatOps for on a regular basis multi-vendor networking duties. Utilizing the open-source platform LibreChat and a fastidiously designed agent persona, we built-in a number of Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP) servers orchestrated via a single Docker Compose deployment: the pyATS neighborhood MCP server alongside official integrations for NetBox, GitHub, and Draw.io.
By a single chat interface, we synchronized inventories utilizing NetBox and the netbox-secrets plugin for credentials, executed gadget audits, generated stories dedicated to GitHub, opened points routinely, validated and deployed configurations with built-in safeguards, and rendered community diagrams on demand.
The Month of Sensible Connections was finally about exhibiting that trendy community automation will not be outlined by distributors, however by interoperability, openness, and shared practices. By combining open requirements, automation frameworks, testing methodologies, and AI-driven workflows, this sequence demonstrated how groups can construct networks that collaborate as successfully because the individuals who function them. Robust automation methods, like sturdy relationships, are constructed over time via consistency, belief, and significant connections.
