It’s an interesting time in networking, isn’t it?  I can probably quote myself saying that for as long as I’ve been blogging and about a year before that.  Supposedly 2015 is the year of POCs, bakeoffs, and seeing which startups continue to get funding, and which ones slowly dissolve.  As we start to see who the winners and losers may be, I thought it would be good to highlight the last 7 years and where the major focuses areas have been and see what could be next.

I had a conversation recently with someone who has more of a sysadmin background.  We started talking about the intersection of DevOps and networking and while his environment wasn’t large, there was one pain point he talked about – he doesn't have access to the network switches to ensure they are configured properly for “his” servers and to ensure packets aren't being dropped, etc. when there are issues with the application, server, or network.  And by the way, he really doesn't want access to the data center switches, because after all, many fear logging into network devices that are in production.  

Could DevOps and network automation help here?

There was a recent blog by Mark Burgess, founder and creator of CFEngine. It is a must read (on his personal blog).  He really makes you think where we are as an industry, question if we are on the right path, and quite frankly calling out certain technologies as pity attempts compared to what is needed. Regardless of all that, we cannot forget one key point, the industry is in fact moving forward right now. 

Over the past few months, I’ve been posting on using Ansible for network automation.  Changing things up a bit, this post will cover using Ansible for server automation and I’ll share a few Ansible playbooks that I’ve built and have been using to bootstrap servers and prep them for various applications such as OpenStack and NSX deployments.  

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with best and the brightest in the industry.  The reach started with my co-workers, partners, and vendors, but gradually expanded due to the likes of maintaining a blog and occasionally being on Twitter.  In a recent exchange with someone who gave me a massive pivot and jump start in my career almost 10 years ago, it reminded me of a presentation this same person gave back then.