1. Nick Matthews nicmatth@cisco.com
Network Programmability User’s Group Why Programmability? Group Details
NPUG
Nick Matthews
Cisco
@nickpowpow
June 18th, 2014

2. GitHub ACI Northbound API PaaS Agile SDK OpenDaylight Azure IaaS ACI
SDN
PCEP
Neutron
Quantum
Southbound
AWS
REST
There’s an absolute proliferation of new things that are starting to become the network, affect the network, or manage the network.
There’s a transition starting, and most people are in the stage of either confusion or denial. There are some that have started to tackle the issues of doing nimble networking at scale, but they’re mostly limited to a very small percentage of users (MSDC, Software startups, large providers). What is everyone else supposed to do?
VXLAN
NSX
Ubuntu
BGP-LS
MaaS
NVGRE
Jenkins

3. ?
It’s confusing because of the sheer quantity of technology being released, the lack of clear communication and relevancy to our daily work, and the growing distance between hype and reality.

4. What are the options?
Ignore it – this is a fad and it will never affect me
Wait – I’m not interested in spending time on things that may not exist in a year
Inform – become familiar with the concepts and technologies
Prepare – start learning some of the core skillsets with the belief they’re valuable
Proof of Concept – some of the benefits directly affect my business and ‘we need this’
Start in Pre-production – it’s important enough that we’ll have developers start with it
Production – F*** it, let’s do it live!
For those in the Ignore / Wait state – danger danger. This is a hazardous mentality to have in technology, where things change very quickly.

5. “When do we want it? … NOW!”
So what’s the driver for this new technology that’s coming?
When was the last time you asked when an application or business group wanted their new software?
The business

6. The Application and Business Users Have Other Choices
If the application and business users of your company are IT’s customers, then you’re no longer a monopoly. If the team trying to deploy the applications the business requires does it too slowly or with too many problems, there are now many other choices for sourcing that service. And cloud services is a more polite way to say ‘outsourcing’.
How fast do the application groups want their new software deployed? It’s almost always immediately. What’s the average time for an IT shop today? Probably a month to a year. If they source the technology through the cloud or deploy to the cloud, those times may be a tenth to half as long.

7. API’s Are Everywhere API API API API API API API API
Who’s got an API on their thermostat? Or on their Fitbit or other exercise device? What about on all of your infrastructure?
CLI is becoming a second-class citizen for some of these services like AWS, Openstack, and APIC, and API’s are the new first-class citizen.
API
API

8. We’re already programming
CLI is a programming language
However, very inflexible
#show run | i access-list vs
#cat running-config.txt | grep access-list
Router#config t
(config)#interface gig0/0
(config-if)#access-group 101 in
import cli
cli.config.acl(“gig0/0”,101,”in”)

9. “Everything that can be automated will be automated.”
In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power
Shoshana Zuboff -

10. Why Automation?
Various:

11. The OS and Sys Admins Did It First - DevOps
A change from manually configuring every server, operating system, and virtual machine to operating a nimble set of infrastructure at scale
1 Server Admin : Servers to
1 Server Admin : 5,000 – 10,000 Servers
CLI + Bash scripts + Reactive configuration
Orchestrated configuration and integration with development
DevOps is a methodology and mindset of combining the efforts of the operations team with development. This is a means automating servers and operating systems in conjunction with development efforts, and programming all repeatable tasks. This results in higher consistency with development, less fires to fight, and a faster development cycle with less back-outs and stalls.
For us networking folk, this is good and bad news. The good news is they have a large tool set and experience doing this, and there are a lot of shared components for us to work with. Unfortunately this also can accelerate the requirement of network programmability, and even potentially cause a false sense of confidence with a different domain. In order for Network Operations to truly integrate with DevOps it will take people from both sides to collaborate and share experience. This is where it’s critical to ‘know the language’.
Network Operations

12. That Sounds Like A Lot Stuff.

13. You don’t need fluency – “Dondey Estas Las Bano”
There are core skills that will be useful even if the technology winds change direction
Knowing the terminology and context will allow you to make better decisions for you and your team or business
Having knowledge of someone else’s problems and process opens up opportunities to solve mutual pain
An example I heard that I like – if you’re traveling to another country you’ll have a better time if you’re fluent. Duh. Most people won’t do that and will need to know the 5-10 most common phrases to get around and that suffices. Anything you learn over that does make your life easier and has benefits.
The same with the road towards automation and software – being able to converse with other folks about what they do has a lot of benefits.

14. Core Skills for Network Programming
Linux / Shell
Most programmatic interfaces are enabled through Linux devices.
Guides and how-to’s will often be Linux only
Mac OSX users are more empowered with a linux-like BSD shell
Can have a steep learning curve – very distributed
Python
Most popular scripting language
Forgiving and easy to use
Large ecosystem of support
Git / GitHub
Modern software configuration management tool – keeping track of code and sharing it
Terminology Awareness
TLA’s (three letter acronyms) and open source tools abound – which ones matter?
Learning these four things will likely not be a waste of your time – with some practice you’ll probably find ways to start using them in your environment.
I think there should be more conversation on having some weekly seminars on learning these technologies hosted by some of the users in this group to augment monthly in person meetings.

15. Goal of NPUG

16. Let’s get through this together
There are so many technologies and diverse skillsets that a group is the best fit
Create a learning environment
Hearing from people using it will help cut through marketing hype
Stories of migration – before/after
Show and Tell – technology how-to’s or small labs
Collaboration on projects – coding together and matching needs with capabilites
Technology Updates – what should we be aware of
Open Source contribution is scary
Afraid to be mocked or that your contribution is dangerous to the code
Let’s create a playground so that we can start somewhere
Minimize Vendor Marketecture and Sales
Stay away from sales and marketing pitches
More real facts, actionable technology, gotcha’s, and networking

17. Format of the Group - Tentatively
Once a month in person meetings, tentatively at the Cisco office
3-6 week weekly virtual meetings that are user-driven on certain topics like linux, python, etc.
Time? Interest? Speakers?
Occasional Labs and Hackathons
Spend 4+ hours playing with Technology hands-on, mixing skill levels
Chat on the google group alias
For help, question, thoughts, comments, announcements, flame wars

18. Group Resources Wiki: Mailer: Internal Mailer: Github: cs.co/npug
Internal Mailer:
Github:
Github.com/npug

19. Technologies we can get our hands on now
Arduino + Raspberry Pi projects
Python Shells
VIRL
Virtual routing lab – running on OpenStack. GNS3 on steroids
Join the mailing list – an will be sent out about access :
OnePK All in One VM
Python Shell on Nexus devices
API’s and Puppet on Nexus
EEM – Routers and Switches
Devnet Sandboxes – still in development
DevStack and Openstack VM builds
OpenDaylight + Mininet
Puppet All in One VM
Links and more details on these will be added to the NPUG cs.co/npug

20. Some Ideas We Can kickstart (advanced)
Automated packet capture
Get a packet capture in the network on demand
Methods:
CLI scripting with capture export feature
OnePK extraction via C SDK
Extend on Monitor Manager
Other ideas or requests?
Ideas that we can work on together and post to GitHub or share

21. VIRL Demo

22. Next Steps CS.CO/NPUG Net-prog+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Please check out the wiki, send feedback to the alias or directly
CS.CO/NPUG
Feedback or additional articles – send it over
Register for the mailing list
To send an
(internal)

23. Shout outs – thank you Bruce McMillan Nathan Sowatskey Dana Blair
Colin McNamara

24. Open Discussion Introductions Meeting time + place, does it work?
Presenter for the next session?
Interest in the webex series?
Time, frequency, topic? Any volunteers?

25. Network Programming – Technologies, Tools, People, Processes
Bootstrap, Configure, Operate
NETCONF
YANG
Cisco
Python API
Open
Daylight
Device
Extension
EEM
DevOps
Integration
People, Tools, Processes
Continuous
Integration
DevOps