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 have fun 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 convey totally 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 learn how to discuss to one another.
On this episode, we launched learn how to use Cisco Crosswork Community Providers 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 proper configuration URIs based mostly on the Community Aspect Driver (NED) of your chosen platform.
Automation works finest when instruments communicate a typical language. Generally the strongest connections come from studying learn how to collaborate past acquainted boundaries.
Episode 2: Select Your Love Language
There are various methods to precise 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 knowledge 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 will be private, however your basis ought 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 develop into a pure a part of community operations.
Testing transforms automation from experimentation into reliability. Belief is just not assumed in automation. It’s repeatedly verified.
Episode 4: Intentions Matter
The most effective connections flip conversations into outcomes.
Within the ultimate 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 rigorously 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 means of a single chat interface, we synchronized inventories utilizing NetBox and the netbox-secrets plugin for credentials, executed machine audits, generated studies 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 fashionable community automation is just not 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 robust relationships, are constructed over time via consistency, belief, and significant connections.