Embracing connectivity, automation, and innovation throughout distributors.
February is the month of affection and friendship. At Cisco DevNet, we used that spirit as inspiration to rejoice one thing we care deeply about: constructing significant connections throughout the networking ecosystem. The Month of Sensible Connections marketing campaign explored how automation and programmability can deliver completely different distributors collectively by way of open requirements, shared tooling, and sensible workflows.
Throughout 4 movies, every paired with its personal code repository, we showcased vendor-agnostic approaches to community automation. From scripting fundamentals to agentic AI workflows, the Month of Sensible Connections delivered sensible concepts that can assist you begin or strengthen your multi-vendor automation journey.
Episode 1: Loving All Distributors
Good relationships begin when everybody agrees on how one can speak to one another.
On this episode, we launched how one can use Cisco Crosswork Community Companies Orchestrator (NSO) to tug and commit configurations throughout multi-vendor environments. One RESTCONF API, zero vendor drama. We additionally demonstrated two light-weight GitHub Copilot brokers designed that can assist you uncover the right configuration URIs primarily based on the Community Aspect Driver (NED) of your chosen platform.
Automation works greatest when instruments communicate a standard language. Generally the strongest connections come from studying how one can collaborate past acquainted boundaries.
Episode 2: Select Your Love Language
There are various methods to specific your affection for automation.
On this episode, we explored three approaches: Python scripting, Ansible playbooks, and CI/CD pipelines. Whereas every workflow has its personal fashion, they share the identical basis: OpenConfig as a vendor-agnostic information mannequin and gNMI because the protocol that enhances it greatest.
Irrespective of which toolchain you favor, open requirements enable consistency throughout environments and groups. The message is straightforward: your workflow will be private, however your basis needs to be common.
Episode 3: Belief Points
Automation solely works when you belief what it does.
On this episode, we explored the open-source Robotic Framework and expanded it right into a vendor-agnostic testing framework tailor-made for networking. By creating customized Python key phrases and leveraging the OpenConfig and gNMI mixture as soon as once more, we demonstrated how automated validation can turn into a pure a part of community operations.
Testing transforms automation from experimentation into reliability. Belief shouldn’t be assumed in automation. It’s constantly verified.
Episode 4: Intentions Matter
One of the best connections flip conversations into outcomes.
Within the closing episode, we constructed an AI agent to allow ChatOps for on a regular basis multi-vendor networking duties. Utilizing the open-source platform LibreChat and a fastidiously designed agent persona, we built-in a number of Mannequin Context Protocol (MCP) servers orchestrated by way of a single Docker Compose deployment: the pyATS group MCP server alongside official integrations for NetBox, GitHub, and Draw.io.
By way of a single chat interface, we synchronized inventories utilizing NetBox and the netbox-secrets plugin for credentials, executed machine audits, generated experiences dedicated to GitHub, opened points robotically, validated and deployed configurations with built-in safeguards, and rendered community diagrams on demand.
The Month of Sensible Connections was finally about displaying that fashionable community automation shouldn’t be outlined by distributors, however by interoperability, openness, and shared practices. By combining open requirements, automation frameworks, testing methodologies, and AI-driven workflows, this sequence demonstrated how groups can construct networks that collaborate as successfully because the individuals who function them. Robust automation methods, like sturdy relationships, are constructed over time by way of consistency, belief, and significant connections.
