Expectation - This day long training will show engineers how to truly manage a network like software by implementing a CI/CD pipeline in a brownfield (existing) environment. After this training, engineers will be able to implement the same workflow into their own environments and manage their infrastructure as code.
Experience - This training will give hands on experience and cover the following:
- Environment Set Up: Using a publicly available ansible collection, you will instantiate a simulated brownfield network, deploy the appropriate tools, and create your network source-of-truth. The source-of-truth will be represented as a vendor agnostic data model.
- Digital Twin Creation: You will use automation to map an existing network and create a digital twin that can be used for testing.
- Pipeline Creation: You will use your digital twin to implement a live, working CI/CD pipeline in GitLab. You will learn how to create the following automated tests as part of your pipeline:
- Data Validation: Using pre-built schemas, you will validate configuration data before it is implemented into the network.
- Stateful Checks: Once implemented in your digital twin, you will learn how to check state of the test network to verify your change did what was expected.
- Telemetry: You will use your pipeline to program the network to send data to telemetry collectors (FileBeat and Logstash), format the data, and ship data to Elasticsearch.
- Visualization: You will learn how to create relevant visualizations in Kibana for monitoring the network.
- Closed Loop Automation: You will learn how to set a basic trigger that kicks off an action in your pipeline automatically.
Execution - Morning session of this training event will focus on Environment Creation, Digital Twin, and Pipeline Creation. The afternoon session will cover Automated Tests, Telemetry, and Closed Loop Automation. After attending this course, engineers will be able to re-use any of the automation and tests in their own environment.
