Find out how to 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now and I’ve noticed huge adjustments within the trade throughout these 20 years, from Body Relay and ATM turning into out of date to Ethernet taking on and turning into a pervasive expertise. However in addition to me getting older and completely different transport applied sciences going by existential crises, the largest improvement 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 nowadays.
Sure, completely different applied sciences and protocols come and go in classical community engineering, however automation requires a very new set of expertise. These new expertise fluctuate in complexity and usefulness from studying easy methods to write YAML recordsdata and dealing with Ansible, to writing HCL recordsdata for Terraform configuration, to being absolutely proficient in a programming language similar to Python or Golang. The idea and basis for all these new expertise comes from software program improvement. 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 dimensions of the networks and environments you might be engaged on, and the way your organization is organized, it is perhaps you that has to grow to be a proficient software program developer and produce automation into your group. Or, you might need to work with software program builders and clarify to them how the community is working, 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 have now a improbable neighborhood of engineers at completely different phases of their careers which are more than pleased to share their onerous discovered automation classes with you. I host a weekly reside stream on Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT known as Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru that’s being broadcast reside and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn account.
In two latest episodes I’ve had the privilege of internet hosting Julio Gomez, Principal Gross sales Architect at Cisco. We’ve mentioned how functions have developed through the years – 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 easy methods to be a community engineer on this new world surrounded by all these thrilling applied sciences. Listed here are hyperlinks the place you’ll be able to watch these recorded episodes:
Mark your calendars to tune in to the weekly reside stream
Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru
Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT
Broadcast reside and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn
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