Wireless Spectrum is Not Just for Mobile Operators Anymore

Cable operators scored a big win in the race for 5G by diving into the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) recent Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum auction. Three of the country’s largest cable companies – Cox, Comcast, and Charter – collectively bid more than $1 billion to gobble up mid-band spectrum perfectly suited for 5G. This promises to be a game-changer in mobile offerings.

These three large Multisystem Operators (MSOs) bought a collective 19-24MHz for $1.14 billion across their wireline footprints, combining for 4.6BMHz Point of Presence (POPs), or .25 cents per MHz/POP. This is a standard measurement for the value of spectrum based on how many people are covered versus how much spectrum is available.

The CBRS licenses are for 10-year periods and purchased on a per-county basis, with 40MHz available in any given county, and some of this may cover large, urban areas. Cable companies will now be able to deliver consumer mobile services, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services, and Managed Private Networks (MPNs) for enterprises. In the early phase, MPNs (4G/5G+WiFi6) will be very attractive to enterprises as they don’t need to buy or sublease the license for the whole county and can rely on the expertise from MSOs to run these networks.

Because the services work both outdoors and indoors, enterprises may wish to use it to connect their Internet of Things (IoT) devices. They may even use it to replace or supplement Wi-Fi in addition to IoT connectivity. Service providers, meanwhile, will most likely use CBRS to deliver FWA services and as a replacement for last-mile fiber access and consumer mobile service to offload their traffic from their Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) partner.

Part of the lure in the purchasing spectrum for these MSOs is to build their own inside-out wireless networks to eliminate high roaming costs they’re paying major mobile service providers through MVNO agreements. Analysts estimate they’re paying up to $700 million in MVNO costs every year.

How cable operators can win with CBRS

The mobile “greenfield” cable companies don’t have legacy 3G or 4G networks to build from, however, they’ll need to make some big decisions around the architecture. Should they start with 4G and then migrate to 5G or go directly to 5G? Should they look at the standard radio model or the new disruptive open Radio Access Network (oRAN) architecture? Going all cloud-native is a no brainer but how distributed the network should be is a decision they need to make. Deciding on what level of automation and security will enable them to run this network at an attractive cost should be a key driver.

In the 4G world, Cisco is a leading provider of packet core and we’re radio agnostic. In the past, service providers were locked into whoever owned the radio, but we can give operators a lot of flexibility. Not being locked into a vendor is a huge advantage from a cost perspective because they can purchase radio equipment from smaller, less expensive, and more agile vendors that will be more open to meeting their demands than larger companies. Another advantage is being able to mix and match from several different vendors and operate them across various regions of their market to identify which ones are the best performers.

As a leader in 5G, we’re a founding member of the Open RAN Policy Coalition. Our first oRAN deployment was a highly successful Non-Standalone (NSA) network with Rakuten in Japan. The best part of that deployment is that Rakuten is free to partner with any number of vendors. DISH Network has also publicly stated its intention to build a 5G Standalone (SA) network using oRAN technology, so it’s clearly gaining traction throughout the industry.

Cable operators need to consider new technology as they expand and modernize networks to capture new service opportunities. Not being locked down between radio and compute allows them to maximize their investment in compute. Also, now that they’ve jumped into the mobile business with both feet, cable executives will be under increasing pressure to make these new ventures profitable. For example, Comcast’s offering is reportedly on track to break even by the end of 2021 with approximately 3.5 million lines of service. Utilizing oRAN could really help make this a reality while saving Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and keeping those costs off the books.

How will this affect 5G development?

CBRS spectrum is expected to cover 80 percent of cable customers in the United States. That’s a very large swath of the country and could mean big money for the MSOs if they use it right. That’s why the FCC is referring to this as the “5G spectrum”. This will make the big cable companies very competitive in the race to roll out SA 5G networks.

Because they are new to this domain, their competitiveness will come from being able to offer more customized solutions for their customers.  As Cable Operators modernize and add new capabilities to their network, they need to look to the future – go right for 5G. The 4G subscribers today will face a cycle of upgrades over the next 24-36 months when most will move into the 5G phone domain, and all smartphones will be 5G within the next few years.

Did you know that Cisco is a leading security provider, protecting 100 percent of the Fortune 100? Or that our automation tools provide a bridge between intent and action? No one is better equipped to secure the cable network. We’re moving into a domain where 5G networks are complex, with automation and security being core fundamentals of these solutions. Cisco is not just a mobile player, we’re an end-to-end network provider with SD-WAN and security portfolios, and dashboards for full network visibility and control.

The future of wireless is multi-access

Now that cable companies have purchased the spectrum license, they can offer 5G to enterprises as a managed service and couple it with Wi-Fi 6 to cover a large variety of use cases. By teaming up with service providers, we can bring them a best-of-breed ecosystem. In this way, cable operators can pinpoint areas of priority that would have a higher take rate for the service so they’re not stuck and can adjust as needed.

We’re building out this service so we can learn together, iterate on innovations, and identify high-priority areas. As a member of the CBRS Alliance, we look forward to working with these MSOs as they build out their new networks. At SCTE-ISBE Cable Tec Virtual Expo, we will be speaking on The state of Converging Access & 5G Mobile Networks. 

Source: cisco.com

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SaaS-based Kubernetes lifecycle management: an introduction to Intersight Kubernetes Service

The transition to cloud native application architectures is rapidly growing and becoming mainstream, increasing the need for container operationalization and management. According to a Gartner report, “growing adoption of cloud-native applications and infrastructure will increase use of container management to over 75% of large enterprises in mature economies by 2024, up from less than 35% in 2020.”

Three years ago we launched Cisco Container Platform (CCP), a self-hosted software container management platform, based on upstream Kubernetes, offering integrations with all the popular public clouds as well as any hardware on-premises. As we have been enabling customers in their containerization and DevOps journeys, we always come across the three key personas that we are trying to help: IT Admins, DevOps and development teams.

◉ IT Admins, responsible for not just for the Kubernetes layer but also the end-to-end cloud infrastructure. They are looking for common tools to easily deploy, manage, visualize, and monitor across the entire infrastructure stack, from server firmware management, to the hyperconverged layer, to the automation and container lifecycle management.

◉ DevOps teams are responsible for the stack’s Day 2 operations. They are looking to protect the precious application data and automate deployment to be able to scale across both infrastructure and application stack.

◉ Development teams want a simple API to hide infrastructure complexity and tools to automate continuous delivery of their Kubernetes-based applications.

The feedback was consistent: how can we expand the functionality of our container management offering to enable integrated management of the complete infrastructure stack under the Kubernetes layer?

That’s exactly why we built Intersight Kubernetes Service.

Expanding Intersight with Kubernetes management

Back in October this year, at Cisco’s Partner Summit, we made a series of announcements under a common umbrella message of “simplifying IT operations across multicloud”. One of them was regarding Cisco Intersight and its evolution. Cisco’s Intersight, from a Cisco data center infrastructure management solution, is becoming a comprehensive cloud operations platform, helping users simplify the management and optimization of infrastructure, workload and applications – on-premises and on public clouds.

One of the first brand new modules to come out of the exciting new Intersight roadmap is Intersight Kubernetes Service (IKS). IKS effectively expands the Cisco Container Platform’s functionality to benefit from Intersight’s native infrastructure management capabilities, further simplifying building and managing Kubernetes environments. IKS is a SaaS offering, taking away the hassle of installing, hosting, and managing a container management solution. For organizations with specific requirements, it also offers two additional deployment options: (with a Virtual Appliance). So let’s take a look at how IKS can make the lives of our personas easier.

Building an end-to-end data center and edge Kubernetes environment with a few clicks

A good example comes from the retail sector: an IT admin needs to quickly create and configure hundreds of edge locations for the company’s retail branches to do AI/ML processing and a few core ones in privately-owned or co-located data centers. The reason it makes sense for processing or storing large chunks of data at the edge is the cost of shipping the data back to the core DC or to a public cloud (and latency to a certain extent).

Creating those Kubernetes clusters would require firmware upgrades, OS and hypervisor installations before we even get to the container layer. With Cisco Intersight providing a comprehensive, common orchestration and management layer, from server and fabric management, to hyperconverged infrastructure management to Kubernetes, creating from scratch a container environment can be literally done with a few clicks.

IT admins can use either the IKS GUI, its APIs or integrate with an Infrastructure as Code plan (such as HashiCorp’s Terraform) to quickly deploy a Kubernetes environment, on a variety of platforms – VMware ESXi hypervisors, Cisco HyperFlex™ Application Platform (HXAP) hypervisors and/or directly on Cisco HyperFlex™ Application Platform bare metal servers (coming soon) – enabling significant savings and efficiency without the need of virtualization.

Similar to the Cisco Container Platform, IKS will also soon support public cloud integrations with all the popular providers. After deploying the environment customers can easily lifecycle manage the entire stack as shown in this video (shown between 1.49-3.22).

Adding full-stack application visibility with Intersight Workload Optimizer

DevOps teams want to bridge the application and infrastructure gap as much as possible. They would be looking to right-size their application replicas (vertically and horizontally scaling of pods and nodes) based on traffic load. A benefit of IKS is that users can connect their Kubernetes workloads to another Intersight SaaS module used for application resource management, Intersight Workload Optimizer, and benefit from right-sizing their containers (by monitoring the traffic between the pods) as explained here (4.23 – 6.11). This way customers can get maximum ROI from the different locations where capacity can be an issue such as edge locations.

At the same time, IT Admins are always aiming for complete visibility across the application and infrastructure stack, beyond just the Kubernetes layer. As both IKS and IWO are part of the same platform, users can get a comprehensive view on the health of the entire stack, which is crucially important when remediating.

Stay tuned for our big IKS general availability launch in February 2021

As we work on the roadmap for IKS and the new features it will bring, we couldn’t be more excited to work with customers exploring new grounds on how to offer more value and accelerate IT operations.

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Webex App Hub: The Premier Collaboration App Ecosystem To Help You Get Stuff Done

Webex App Hub is a Connections Platform that Helps Everyone do Their Best Work Everyday, Everywhere

As announced today, we are thrilled to bring to market the all new Webex App Hub! This reimagined app ecosystem is designed to help people find industry-leading apps with deep integrations with Webex in order to help move work forward.  It’s easy to visit the all new Webex App Hub to find apps that automate and enhance your work experience.

Our joint work with developers, partners, and independent software vendors help extend the value of Webex by offering you a suite of collaboration solutions across multiple industries and functions. The Webex App Hub makes it simple for users and IT to take advantage of native integrations, bots, and widgets to make work flow easier and smarter.

Integrations Making it Easy to Add and Collaborate with Third-Party Applications 

Webex already integrates seamlessly with many industry-leading apps, including brand new integrations announced today with Workplace from Facebook, Box, Salesforce, ServiceNow, DropBox, and Miro.

Webex isn’t just about video conferencing and meetings. Webex is a connections platform that helps people to get work done, whenever and wherever they need to. With open APIs, SDKs, and workflow connectors including IFTTT, Zapier, and Microsoft Power Automate, Webex allows you to create truly powerful custom integrations to redefine workflows and save time. You’ll also find a wide variety of third-party apps on the Webex App Hub that work out-of-the-box and support everything from productivity and working from home to telehealth and personal reminders. Some recent additions include:

◉ PagerDuty: Automatically create a War Room space with the team responsible for a service. Add service owners and acknowledge, resolve, and escalate incidents quickly using the bot.

◉  Microsoft Outlook Alerts: Stay on top of your inbox with notifications from the Outlook Alerts for Microsoft Office 365 bot for Webex. Create custom rules based on subject lines and email recipients and never again miss a business-critical email. For greater efficiency and fluidity, you can even have those insights sent directly to relevant Webex spaces and teams.

◉ Trello: Use the Trello bot to easily update and create new Trello Cards and Lists directly from the Webex app and get real-time notifications that enable all members of the team to stay in the know.

◉ ExtendedCare Cloud Virtual Care : ExtendedCare Telehealth™ and ExtendedCare Bedside™ are available as cloud-based solutions powered by Cisco Webex Meetings. The world’s most robust collaboration infrastructure now enables enterprise-class performance, reliability, and security delivered in tailored, carefully phased deployments that meet your facility’s precise needs and expectations.

◉ ADP: With ADP Virtual Assistant, companies using ADP for payroll and Webex for internal collaboration can give their employees convenient access to their own workplace information – directly within Webex.

We make it easy for users to find and use integrations within a Webex messaging space, and soon you’ll be able to experience the same thing in a Webex meeting. Users will be able to easily add and collaborate with third-party applications while in a Webex meeting. When the meeting ends, the work is automatically saved so you can pick up where you left off when the time allows.

Out of the Box Integrations Help You Get Work Done Faster and Better

What sets the all new Webex App Hub apart is the breadth of these integrations across calling, meeting, messaging, devices, intelligence and analytics. No other collaboration app ecosystem compares in scope.

And especially for developers, we’re introducing a whole new world of opportunity: Webex is OPEN!  Come work with us and build the apps that will help power efficiency in this new world of work. The Webex SDKs and widgets make it easy  for developers to embed high quality audio-video calling and messaging into any web or native application. We’ve also exposed more powerful capabilities, like programmatically adding an embedded app to a space.

Source: cisco.com

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Building Adaptive IT that Runs at Market Speed

The challenges of 2020 have pushed the reset button on nearly every aspect of business, including the way you work, operate, and deliver products and services. As organizations work toward recovery and growth, there needs to be a focus on creating an adaptive IT environment.

Why adaptive IT? New research tells us adaptive organizations enjoy three times’ faster revenue growth than their competition. Given that 80% of revenue growth could depend on digital offerings and operations by 2022, adaptive IT is necessary for delivering a resilient and sustainable future.

Cultivating adaptive IT starts with your workforce

There are several ways to improve your adaptability as an organization, according to Forrester. These include:

◉ Acting on insights: Let the data drive your decisions to boost your odds of meeting future customer demand.

◉ Leveraging platforms to deliver new value: Use powerful technology advancements to transition to new business models.

◉ Building a culture that embraces change: Inspire employees to think outside of the box to improve flexibility and reduce fear of change.

The success of these actions depends on the capabilities of your workforce.

With 76% of organizations challenged to find the expertise they need, organizations need to think differently about how they build and maintain an adaptive workforce.

Creating a flexible workforce

Engineering an adaptive workforce enables you to address evolving business priorities as the market changes. This means tapping into the right skill sets, where and when you need them. To ensure organizations of all sizes have access to the expertise, analytics, and insights they need, Cisco Business Critical Services (BCS) recently restructured our lifecycle services portfolio into a three-tier service: Essentials, Advantage, and Premier.

With each tier, you get a pre-determined set of services with the right amount of intelligence and guidance – at every step of your Cisco lifecycle journey. For organizations that need access to dedicated experts, our Specialized Expertise – Scrum Services and Expert-as-a-Service – can help.

With BCS, your teams can create adaptive IT by:

◉ Identifying capabilities and deliverables to address changing priorities, speed adoption, support cross-architecture projects, and accelerate transformation.

◉ Augmenting your workforce with industry-leading expertise in strategy, design, implementation, operations, and optimization

◉ Accelerating complex problem solving through 1:1 coaching sessions and workshops based on specific use cases and insight reviews

Ever found yourself in a situation where you didn’t have the right capabilities to drive a new initiative or address a technical initiative? For assistance with priority projects or unexpected events, Specialized Expertise is a great fit.

Say your business kickstarted its digital transformation journey, but it’s progressing at a slow and steady pace. You realize the urgency of enabling digital ways of working and delivering services. However, to ramp up digital transformation, your IT teams need to modernize legacy systems to ensure applications run smoothly.

With our Scrum Services, you could proactively address your top initiatives throughout the lifecycle with​ flexible IT engagements that allow you to adjust skill sets to match the evolving business needs of your large, multi-domain Cisco solutions.​ Capabilities range from planning and architecture, design and engineering, implementation planning and execution, operations and enablement, automation, cloud transformation, to security readiness, and security breach and attack simulation.

With BCS Expert-as-a-Service, you can close technology gaps by adding the precise expertise you need to elevate collective knowledge and perform at peak levels.

◉ For domain knowledge and architectural design and support, you might select a solution architect.

◉ For hands-on confirmation of your Cisco technologies, a consulting engineer could be the right choice.

◉ For large strategic projects requiring end-to-end delivery management and team coordination, a project manager can assist.

In addition, BCS also offers teams Accelerators best practice coaching sessions to skill-up together.  During these sessions, your staff get the chance to dive into real-world technical cases and engineering challenges, analyze your IT environment to uncover strengths and opportunities for improvement, and learn best practices from experts.

With continuous access to expertise, analytics, and insights, our customers have achieved three times’ faster software upgrades and 70% faster configuration changes.

An operating model to help you adapt

For more than three decades, Cisco has been helping organizations operate at market speed to address changing business priorities. Whether you’re looking to optimize performance and de-risk IT, accelerate technology adoption and transformation, or address the changing priorities of your multi-domain solutions, BCS can help.

To fast-track your path to recovery and growth, BCS recently created a business resiliency operating model that accelerates transformation by improving IT resilience and adaptability. Grounded in best practices and Cisco intellectual capital, this model can help you survive and thrive in these dynamic times.

When used in conjunction with our lifecycle services, our model empowers organizations to respond quickly to emerging needs with an adaptive workforce, enable continuous transformation to strengthen infrastructure to support emerging workforce models, and deliver a fully optimized digital customer experience.

Find out how Cisco Business Critical Services can help you create an adaptive workforce with Specialized Expertise.

If you missed our webinar on how to create resilient, adaptive, and transformative IT, you can watch it on demand.

Source: cisco.com

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The Future of the Cell Site is the Router

Evolving Cell Site to Multi-Service Cell Site

With 2G, Cell Sites were primarily (designed around circuit-switched TDM Based connectivity and ) responsible for enabling Voice traffic. As the 3G/4G picked up momentum, Cell Sites were upgraded to carry (IP based traffic for) both Voice and Data traffic. This upgrade of Cell Site functionality aligned well with the profitability of Operators. The networks which were aggressive in this transition of Cell Site enabled the profitability. With the 5G around the corner, the role of the Cell Site will be even more crucial. It plays a critical role in adding a new revenue stream, enhance the current offering, and build the business case for 5G adoption. Cell Sites would need to evolve to Multi-Service Site which would offer new revenue-generating streams like B2B service for Small Enterprises and SMB customers, enhanced user experience for social media and streaming services, public safety applications, IOT/Smart City applications, and far edge use cases.

For the Multi-Service Cell Site – it’s imperative that it would demand much higher bandwidth, resiliency, and significantly lower latency. However, most of the Cell Site deploys sub-optimal architecture with layer 2 technologies. While layer 2 solutions have a lower capex, they tend to have higher opex and extremely restrictive in terms of new service creation. To realize the full potential of the Cell Site, it’s critical to bring Layer3 to Cell Site. The backhaul networks have already evolved from MPLS-TP / TDM to Layer3/IP-MPLS-SR. Extending these technologies to Cell Site will bring significant benefits to the service which can be delivered.

Cisco Converged 5G Transport

Let’s look at some of the key benefits of such evolved architecture:

Robust Infrastructure: The Infrastructure which enabled 3G/4G will not be sufficient to fully realize the potential of the Multi-Service Cell Site. It needs to secure, redundant, reliable, scalable, and SDN enabled. Any compromise on this aspect could result in sub-optimal performance of the network. Using Router/Layer3 based devices at the Cell Site would enable:

◉ Site Sharing/Densification

◉ Best in class Timing capability with Class C precision and SyncE up to the cell site

◉ Carrier-Class Reliability and Redundancy

◉ Consistent OAM end to end

◉ Trust Worthy System with complete visibility of Device Security health.

Service Agility: As we look ahead and build a business case for 5G investment, every network port in the cell site would be viewed as a service port. Uniform function availability / Flexibility and consistency of features will be of utmost importance. The gateway device at the cell Site should have the capability of Network Slicing / Service Demarcation / Quality of Service / Monitoring capability of Service and seamless integration. The Cell Site router provides all the capabilities mentioned along with:

◉ Ease of Integrating 5G Core with AMF/SMF/UPF.

◉ End to End Network Slicing

◉ Seamless Service provisioning & workflow

◉ Consistent QoS across the network

◉ Consistent Service Monitoring across the network.

Operational benefits: Apart from the Capex investment and generating the business case for new revenue-generating streams, the subject of Operational Expenditure has also been the primary part of the 5G journey. It’s unfathomable to build a network that relies on manual intervention apart from racking and stacking activities. Using Router at Cell Site will make the operation seamless and aligned to the rest of the networks. Consistent Tools cross the network allow for stronger control over the network. While the Backhaul & Edge networks have been using the Automation capabilities for a while, given the remoteness of Cell Site – it’s even more critical to have an Automation-first approach for the Cell Site. Features like ZTP, Telemetry

◉ End to End Automation and tighter integration with backhaul.

◉ End to End Layer3/IP for consistent reporting & analytics

◉ Reduced network Touch Points

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Drive business efficiency with secure remote work technology

Remote work is nothing new. In fact, it might be one of the most dominant phrases in 2020’s word cloud. The good news is that with the right technology in place, remote work can deliver benefits across your organization.

Cloud-delivered solutions enable remote workers to remain productive, efficient, and secure – even from the couch. All while helping drive down costs. And with the tips below, you can get even more out of your remote work experience.

Secure your remote workspaces

The three most important words in real estate are location, location, location. In remote work, they’re security, security, security.

The FBI has seen a 300 percent – yes 300 percent – increase in cybercrime since the start of COVID-19. With multiple sites to protect, and employees using home networks and personal devices, remote work opens you up to increased risk. You need to give your remote employees and your business the confidence to collaborate safely with security solutions that:

◉ Offer built-in encryption

◉ Ensure secure endpoint access for any device in your network

◉ Protect sensitive data with robust identity verification for users and devices

◉ Allow employees to communicate and share files securely

◉ Defend against threats with cloud-delivered security

Keep collaboration simple

Login issues, dropped connections, poor audio quality, and other issues like blurry video can affect your team’s ability to work together. Give your employees access to reliable, high-quality voice, video, and messaging in a single solution. Choose collaboration technology that allows employees to:

◉ Seamlessly communicate and collaborate across devices

◉ Share messages and files quickly 1:1 or with a whole team

◉ Quickly find conversations and documents

◉ Brainstorm using a digital whiteboard

◉ Integrate with the apps they use every day

◉ Record meetings and get automatic transcripts

Reduce IT complexity

IT should work for you, not vice versa. Make sure your collaboration technology helps you maximize your time while minimizing your IT hassles. To that end, look for simplified solutions that:

◉ Effortlessly integrate virtual meetings, calling, WiFi, and security

◉ Can easily be deployed and managed by employees who might not have IT skills

◉ Scale with you as your business needs change

Cisco Designed Secure Remote Work  

Fortunately, you don’t have to look far to find the right work from anywhere technology. At Cisco, our small business portfolio includes the collaboration and security solutions you need to simplify, secure, and support your remote work environments. With Cisco Designed Secure Remote Work, you get everything your business needs to deliver an exceptional remote work experience.

◉ Cisco Webex®: Make it easy for your remote teams to meet, securely share messages and files, search for information, private message, group chat, brainstorm, and work together efficiently.

◉ Cisco Secure Access by Duo: Protect your remote workers’ sensitive data with robust two-factor security that verifies the identity of users, devices, and applications attempting to access your data.

◉ Cisco UmbrellaTM: Protect remote users wherever they’re working with flexible, fast, and effective front-line security by blocking malicious destinations before a connection is established.

◉ Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense: Scan all your email, internal and external, without difficult technical challenges or interrupting the regular delivery of messages from the cloud while detecting and blocking threats.

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How I Got Started with Network Automation

Recently I joined the Cisco DevNet team as a Content Developer Engineer. This is exciting for me, because I have an opportunity to merge the two things that I love most: learning more about network automation and helping the IT community grow within their skills.

This year marks 20 years that I have been in information technology. I’ve seen the industry change multiple times, and right now we are in the middle of another major shift. That shift is being driven by organizations needing to expand and extend their networks, resources and services rapidly and at scale. In other words, automation.

By the end of this post, I will share my journey into network automation, Cisco Systems, as well as provide you with everything you need to join the #DevNetClassOf2020. Quick note: I am also going to let you know how you can get a 25% off exam voucher too!

How I started with Network Automation

In my career, the greatest rewards have come when I have stepped outside of my comfort zone and taken some risks. From joining the Military (USAF), to starting my YouTube channel, learning Python, and now being a part of Cisco Systems. Each one of these moments has helped me get to where I am today. Now that I am here, I am committed to helping you walk, run, and fly in network automation! Are you ready to step outside of your comfort zone?

Three years ago, I was a Systems Administrator working in a comfortable government position. Back then, I thought I would never need to learn to code. To be honest, I could have stayed in that environment, but I decided to take a risk so that I could follow my passion which is network engineering.

In that position, I was tasked with some highly visible projects that drove me to learn the programming language Python. My road to this point has been awesome. I am DevOps certified, DevNet certified, and I have been in a NetDevOps role for the past year. Balancing software sprints and network engineering have prepared me for this new role within Cisco Systems.

Learning Python

People ask me often, “do you need to know Python as a network engineer?” The answer is no you do not… That is until you need a tool to perform a task that has not yet been created. Python gives you the ability to customize and create applications as you need them.

When I first began coding, I could have started with Ansible. However, I found Netmiko to be one of the best tools available for network automation. Because it allowed me to write my python scripts and then parse my return data exactly as I needed. So, I started there. My first automation script was to change the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) configuration for over 300 devices in our network. My second automation script was to update the enable secret password on 700 devices. All of this was achieved in under 50 lines of code. This task normally would take days, to manually login and update each router and switch. But with the power of automation, I took about a day to write and test my code in a nonproduction environment. Then about 30 minutes to run and verify the completion of my script in production.

How you can get started

When I started automating, learning resources were scarce on these topics. Now, you have a great opportunity to leverage platforms like the DevNet sandbox. Here you can access multiple Cisco platforms and labs that will walk you through utilizing tools like Python, Postman, and Ansible to configure and manage your networks. Many of these resources are free and always available. If you are totally brand new to automation, I recommend you visit the “Start Now” page on DevNet to get started.

Get DevNet Certified

One of the top questions being asked of network engineers right now is, can you automate? Organizations want to manage their networks more effectively and efficiently. The Cisco DevNet Associates certification can set you on the path to do that. The certificates not only validates your skillset but also will add value to your resume to help you stand out. Lastly, the DevNet Associates certification will give you the ability to speak the same language as software developers and other automation stakeholders.

Here’s a link for a 25% off exam voucher. If you pass before the end of the year, you will get a cool digital badge, free DevNet merchandise, access to special DevNet sessions with the one and only Susie Wee, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco DevNet & CX Ecosystem Success. 

Call to Action

If I can automate, so can you! Change is inevitable and the more you embrace it, the further ahead you will be. I wish you much success on your automation journey. I look forward to welcoming you to the #DevNetClassof2020.

Source: cisco.com

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