First steps with pyATS

Have you ever wanted to compare the operational state of a bunch of network devices between two specific times? Not only if the interfaces are up or down, but the number and status of BGP peers, the number of prefixes received, the number of entries into a MAC-address table, etc? This is something quite laborious to do with classical NMS or Do-It-Yourself scripts. And this is where pyATS can become a real asset. Here are my first steps with pyATS: Network Test & Automation Solution.

Read More...

Automate file uploads to your Cisco Nexus switches

If you have more than three Cisco Nexus switches in nx-os mode, and you are not using Cisco DCNM or any other similar tool, you probably already have encountered this question: How to automate file uploads to your Cisco Nexus switches? Here is a turnkey Python script using Netmiko’s SCP function to do this.

Read More...

Shutdown thousands access ports with Python and Netmiko

When people ask me “what a network engineer should do to start in network automation?”, my first answer is: start with small things. Try to automate basic and repetitive tasks you do every day. Go after the low-hanging fruits first. Then, step by step, you can do more and more complex things. This is how I learn the best. In the same vein, I want to share with you my recent experience of automating a very basic and repetitive task: shutdown thousands of unused network access ports.

Read More...

Python script and multiple API calls practice with Google and Twitter

After doing a lot of Python tutorials and spending time “playing” with Postman and API calls during my journey to network programmability and automation, I wanted to make a concrete example, from zero to a visible result. Since I love photography and my country is full of beautiful but not well-known places, I chose to do the following: Take the complete list of municipalities, towns and villages in my country. Choose one location per day, randomly, in this list. Search and download a photo of this place on Google map, including…

Read More...