Itential @ Networking Field Day 31

Itential Network Automation for NetDevOps Teams

NetDevOps is about applying both NetOps and DevOps principles to how we manage and operate networks and infrastructure, bridging the two teams to enable greater organizational efficiency. In this presentation, Chris Wade, CTO & Co-Founder at Itential, introduces how the Itential Automation Platform is enabling NetDevOps teams to deliver network automation and orchestration at scale as well as:

• The evolution of network automation and orchestration.
• How network infrastructure has evolved to support modern, cloud-first network services.
• The convergence of NetOps and DevOps as the industry moves toward hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure.
• Itential’s platform architecture with capabilities to integrate, build, test, and deploy automations to be used as a self-service platform for your IT organization.

Integrate Network Automations With Your Entire IT Ecosystem

For NetDevOps teams, building automations is a foundational process. In this session, Dan Sullivan, Principal Solutions Engineer at Itential, demonstrates how Itential’s low-code automation canvas enables rapid creation of end-to-end network automations across multi-vendor and hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure with capabilities such as:

• Low-code visual canvas for building orchestration workflows that can leverage integrated systems as drag-and-drop tasks within a workflow.
• JSON Schema-based data transformations to manipulate and translate data between API tasks in an automation workflow.
• Reusable templates that use Jinja2 to construct network configurations and API payloads.
• Command templates for reusable sets of tasks.
• JSON-based forms to provide a layer of input validation when exposing automations to an end user.

Rapidly Design & Build Network Automations

For NetDevOps teams, building automations is a foundational process. In this session, Dan Sullivan, Principal Solutions Engineer at Itential, demonstrates how Itential’s low-code automation canvas enables rapid creation of end-to-end network automations across multi-vendor and hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure with capabilities such as:

• Low-code visual canvas for building orchestration workflows that can leverage integrated systems as drag-and-drop tasks within a workflow.
• JSON Schema-based data transformations to manipulate and translate data between API tasks in an automation workflow.
• Reusable templates that use Jinja2 to construct network configurations and API payloads.
• Command templates for reusable sets of tasks.
• JSON-based forms to provide a layer of input validation when exposing automations to an end user.

Enhance Your Ability To Test & Validate Network Automations

NetDevOps teams must ensure that every automation is validated and tested before production deployments. In this session, Joksan Flores, Senior Solutions Engineer at Itential, demonstrates how NetDevOps teams can manage configurations with Itential’s Configuration Manager application within the Itential Automation Platform and provide testing, validation, and verification before changes are introduced into the network with capabilities such as:

• End-to-end input validation through the use of JSON schemas for API input and output.
• Command templates to generate robust pre-check and post-check processes that can be reused to build a library of testing and validation assets.
• Support for both traditional CLI-managed interfaces and modern APIs to ensure compliance is maintained across the entire network and validated before a change is made.
• Testing and outputs provided while building each asset to catch issues early.

How To Expose & Deliver Self-Service Network Automations

Expanding the use of trusted automations to end-users and platforms is key for delivering self-service networking. In this session, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, demonstrates how Itential users can publish any automation workflow in Itential’s Operations Manager application within the Itential Automation Platform and then define a method to run the automation. This allows automations to be consumed in a variety of ways across an organization, including:

• External systems such as DevOps pipelines or IT systems via northbound API exposure.
• Event-driven, to provide automation execution in response to a specific event trigger.
• Manually scheduled to be run at specific intervals

To ensure security while exposing automations to end users, Itential provides support and integration for RBAC, SSO, and existing LDAP services.

Additionally, leveraging Itential’s ServiceNow Application, available in the ServiceNow Store, NetDevOps teams can present network and infrastructure automations into the ServiceNow Platform, allowing users to run these automations to deliver and complete IT service requests.