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now and I’ve noticed huge adjustments within the trade throughout these 20 years, from Body Relay and ATM turning into out of date to Ethernet taking up and turning into a pervasive know-how. However apart from me getting older and totally different transport applied sciences going by existential crises, the most important growth 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, totally different applied sciences and protocols come and go in classical community engineering, however automation requires a totally new set of expertise. These new expertise range in complexity and value from studying learn how to write YAML recordsdata and dealing with Ansible, to writing HCL recordsdata for Terraform configuration, to being absolutely proficient in a programming language akin to Python or Golang. The premise and basis for all these new expertise comes from software program growth. This has at all times been tangential to community engineering, however with the appearance 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 could be you that has to turn into a proficient software program developer and convey automation into your group. Or, you may need to work with software program builders and clarify to them how the community is operating, what must be achieved to automate your corporation 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 now have a implausible neighborhood of engineers at totally different levels of their careers which are very happy to share their laborious realized automation classes with you. I host a weekly dwell stream on Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT known as Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru that’s being broadcast dwell and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn account.
In two current episodes I’ve had the privilege of internet hosting Julio Gomez, Principal Gross sales Architect at Cisco. We’ve mentioned how functions have developed over time – from monoliths to micro companies architectures, containerized functions and Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, telepresence (not the Cisco one), mirrord, Okteto, and extra. Most significantly, we talked about learn how to be a community engineer on this new world surrounded by all these thrilling applied sciences. Listed here are hyperlinks the place you may watch these recorded episodes:
Mark your calendars to tune in to the weekly dwell stream
Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru
Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT
Broadcast dwell and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn
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