Tips on 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I’ve noticed large modifications within the business throughout these 20 years, from Body Relay and ATM changing into out of date to Ethernet taking on and changing into a pervasive expertise. However moreover me getting older and completely different transport applied sciences going by existential crises, the largest growth 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 today.
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 value from studying find out how to write YAML information and dealing with Ansible, to writing HCL information for Terraform configuration, to being absolutely proficient in a programming language resembling Python or Golang. The idea and basis for all these new expertise comes from software program growth. This has all the time 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’re engaged on, and the way your organization is organized, it may be you that has to turn into a proficient software program developer and convey automation into your group. Or, you might need to work with software program builders and clarify to them how the community is operating, what must be completed to automate your online business processes and workflows in a language and with ideas that they perceive and that they’ll 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 unbelievable group of engineers at completely different levels of their careers which can be more than pleased to share their laborious realized automation classes with you. I host a weekly dwell stream on Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT referred to as Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru that’s being broadcast dwell and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn account.
In two current episodes I’ve had the privilege of internet hosting Julio Gomez, Principal Gross sales Architect at Cisco. We’ve mentioned how functions have advanced 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 find out how to be a community engineer on this new world surrounded by all these thrilling applied sciences. Listed here are hyperlinks the place you may watch these recorded episodes:
Mark your calendars to tune in to the weekly dwell stream
Simplifying Community Automation with NetGru
Wednesdays at 9:00AM PT
Broadcast dwell and recorded on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel and LinkedIn
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