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 deliver 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 will help you begin or strengthen your multi-vendor automation journey.
Episode 1: Loving All Distributors
Good relationships begin when everybody agrees on easy methods to discuss to one another.
On this episode, we launched easy methods 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 will help you uncover the right configuration URIs based mostly on the Community Aspect Driver (NED) of your chosen platform.
Automation works finest when instruments communicate a standard language. Generally the strongest connections come from studying easy methods to collaborate past acquainted boundaries.
Episode 2: Select Your Love Language
There are various 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.
Regardless of which toolchain you favor, open requirements enable consistency throughout environments and groups. The message is straightforward: your workflow could be private, however your basis must 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 into a pure a part of community operations.
Testing transforms automation from experimentation into reliability. Belief isn’t assumed in automation. It’s constantly verified.
Episode 4: Intentions Matter
The perfect 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 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.
Via a single chat interface, we synchronized inventories utilizing NetBox and the netbox-secrets plugin for credentials, executed system audits, generated studies dedicated to GitHub, opened points robotically, validated and deployed configurations with built-in safeguards, and rendered community diagrams on demand.
The Month of Sensible Connections was in the end about displaying that fashionable community automation isn’t 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. Sturdy automation methods, like sturdy relationships, are constructed over time via consistency, belief, and significant connections.
