Network Engineer w/ automation (anyone with experience?)

hurricane1091

Hello all,

I recently applied to what seemed like a traditional network engineer role, and had a phone interview today. I now have an on-site interview as well, but this is just a strange situation for me.

Basically, this person was a VP of technology of sorts. He asked me my background, and I gave it. He asked about network automation, and I told him I have no experience or knowledge in this. I told him about some ideas I've thought about, but that I have zero programming knowledge and no idea if this stuff is now yet possible. He liked my forward thinking and was okay with the lack of automation experience as long as I was willing to learn some sort of programming language (not a fan of programming, but I already accepted that this is a skill set that will one day be needed and I will have to learn) and that there would be programmers on this team.

My question is, is anyone in this situation currently? We keep hearing cries of SDN and automation, but I hear next to nothing from other network guys in the field. I've seen little when I have tried to research this stuff in the past. SD-WAN is currently on the forefront this year for many companies (we explored it 2 years ago, doesn't make sense of us cost wise). There's got to be a network engineer with automation experience on here, right?

The person I spoke with basically said he doesn't know what is possible but he knows they want to be on the forefront and are very progressive. It sounds like an incredible opportunity with a credible company that has over 4 stars off of 1000 reviews on GlassDoor, but I'm just so uncertain about what this could end up like. If a company wanted to hire me and I received the chance to learn a vital skill like programming and be on the forefront of technology, there's no way I could say no - especially if it involved a pay raise. The flip side is I have an interview with a hospital tomorrow, and I had a follow up interview with a company so far behind the curve it's not even funny. My current job is good, but mundane. Very good data center with Nexus 7ks at the core for example, DR site, 100+ offices. Very stagnant though, no longer on the bleeding edge (no SDN or SD-WAN or anything of the like on the horizon).

Thoughts are much appreciated.

darkerz

Ask yourself "How can I do my Network job without SSH'ing to each box?".

Then make yourself do it.

Before you know it, your boss will ask you to finish a change request to move 1,000 network devices from 1 NTP server to another and you'll whip out a python script / web form and boom, done (after CAB and approvals... of course ).

That's pretty much the state of "SDN", unless you work for a Big 4 technology company or similar. In 2013 I was deathly afraid of automation eliminating the need for Network & NetSec people in companies. 4+ years later, not only is that absolutely wrong, but the Cloud, IoT and Complexity Growth Factors* have made us very well paid and very needed professionals.

Those guys on packet pushers reallllllly missed the mark and bought into the marketing buzz'words. To their credit, they did openly say "what's the buzzword this time?", so, yeah.

Source: I work for a Big 4, and in the end its the same data center infrastructure you'd expect to see anywhere else with a middle-layer of automation on top and web forms / UI's / API's for customers/services teams.

kalimuscle

Interesting to know that this is how it happens over at microsoft.

darkerz wrote: »

Ask yourself "How can I do my Network job without SSH'ing to each box?".

Then make yourself do it.

Before you know it, your boss will ask you to finish a change request to move 1,000 network devices from 1 NTP server to another and you'll whip out a python script / web form and boom, done (after CAB and approvals... of course ).

That's pretty much the state of "SDN", unless you work for a Big 4 technology company or similar. In 2013 I was deathly afraid of automation eliminating the need for Network & NetSec people in companies. 4+ years later, not only is that absolutely wrong, but the Cloud, IoT and Complexity Growth Factors* have made us very well paid and very needed professionals.

Those guys on packet pushers reallllllly missed the mark and bought into the marketing buzz'words. To their credit, they did openly say "what's the buzzword this time?", so, yeah.

Source: I work for a Big 4, and in the end its the same data center infrastructure you'd expect to see anywhere else with a middle-layer of automation on top and web forms / UI's / API's for customers/services teams.

dontstop

darkerz wrote: »

Before you know it, your boss will ask you to finish a change request to move 1,000 network devices from 1 NTP server to another and you'll whip out a python script / web form and boom, done (after CAB and approvals... of course ).

That's the current state of SDN but surely that's not what SDN was intended for? That's not very different from what the SysAdmin guys have been doing for the past 10 years with Puppet/Chef actually even worse if we're just scripting on top of the network. I thought SDN was more about having the network react and change flows or have applications laid over it to control and react to inputs. What you describe just sounds like configuration management

hurricane1091

So basically I can just use Kiwi Cat Tools if I want everything to point to another NTP server, no programming knowledge needed. I was hoping there were other things out there by now since everyone loves the buzzwords.

The job though sounds interesting.

networker050184

I use ansible very heavily for automation and compliance. It's great. There are definitely more than a single tool to do the job though. You can buy something off the shelf and work within the restraints or build something yourself that does exactly what you need.


Automation is not SDN though. Using a script to push commands to an IOS device isn't SDN.

hurricane1091

I understand, but what is SDN? It is consistently shoved down our throats and yet no one ever says they are doing it. What does this job expect? The guy basically admitted he has no idea what's possible.

I met with Cisco. I saw their ACI stuff. No one in their right mind is going to spend the money upgrading everything right now to work with that stuff unless the only equipment you can buy is SDN capable.

I have ideas about what can be automated but have no idea how it can be done or if it's possible. Switch port configuration is the biggest one. It's a monkey's task. Phones go on one vlan, workstations on another, printers on another, etc. Somethings got to be possible there.

dontstop

hurricane1091 wrote: »

I understand, but what is SDN?

What the Hell is SDN? - PacketLife.net

SDN is still evolving. The only poor analogy I can give for you at the moment is think about SDN like what Apple's iPhoneOS did for the regular phone. It took a piece of dumb hardware and gave developers access to it's features. Although not instantly but over time creative people changed the way we use phones today by developing against hardware that had an API talk to.

I would say there are two major players innovating in this space right now. Very very small startups like the Silicon Valley type and very very large companies who are at the bleeding edge of networks (Google/Facebook/Twitter) who have very unusual requirements for network infrastructure and load requirements not typically seen in enterprise.

networker050184

I think right now we're seeing the cloud heavy companies investing the most in software networking in the NFV areas. Virtual LBs, FWs, etc. with rules populated by controllers are about the closest you'll see to SDN in the wild for most companies. That and the whole "SD WAN" deals.

ccie14023

Let me begin with my usual disclaimer that I work on programmability and automation at Cisco, which either makes me more qualified or less qualified to write on this subject, depending on your point of view. I also have an interview coming out in the next few days on Packet Pushers so hopefully I won't "miss the mark", to darkerz' point

The situation you describe is very common. Many customers I speak with are still managing their networks the conventional way (CLI with SNMP-based NMS, some light scripting) and are quite interested in automation/programmability because they are "new" and they think there will be a shift in how devices are managed in the future. Cisco (and some other vendors I suppose) is investing a lot of engineering effort into increasing the programmability of our devices. I work on Catalyst specifically, and every new release of our IOS-XE software has more programmability features.

You could, of course, do programmability before, using tools like Expect and TCL. What we are working on is building the data models (YANG-based) to enable far more efficient programmability. These data models can be easily consumed by, for example, Python scripts. You could read a NETCONF reply with, say, the routing table directly into a Python dictionary without having to do a bunch of regular expressions. This significantly increases the ease of device-level programmability. With so many systems (at Cisco, ISE, APIC-EM, Spark, etc.) opening up REST API's, this creates a whole new level of device/application interaction. I built a demo where you can interact with a switch using messages posted to a Spark room.

Then, of course, there are also the GUI-based automation tools like ACI/APIC-DC, APIC-EM, and DCNM. They're all really about doing things more efficiently and auto-provisioning config to devices to save time/effort.

I agree with darkerz that these tools won't make network engineers obsolete. I often use the analogy of an airplane cockpit. In modern cockpits the old dial gauges have been replaced by sleek flat-panel displays. The pilot interacts with the machine quite differently, but he still darn well better know about aerodynamics, weather systems, engine systems, etc. It's the same for a network engineer. It's not about making them obsolete, but about a better way to interact with the devices they manage.

As for career advice, you simply cannot go wrong spending some time with Python/NETCONF, or at least Ansible with CLI templating. The largest networks must use tools like these, so there will always be demand. If I manage to do my job right, hopefully there will be wider adoption of these technologies and smaller customers will take advantage of them as well.

hurricane1091

Thank for for the replies so far all. Very interesting stuff.

hurricane1091

So any advice on how to get this job? Not a programmer at all and they know it but still invited me for an interview​. One job I interviewed twice for turned me down and I was surprised because the interview was pretty advanced level and I did really well, so I'm down to the one I went to Friday and this one.

networker050184

Same as any job interview, show passion for the technology. If you don't know some of the topics thats fine, make sure the ones you do know you know well though. Tell them you want the job.

Good luck!

hurricane1091

networker050184 wrote: »

Same as any job interview, show passion for the technology. If you don't know some of the topics thats fine, make sure the ones you do know you know well though. Tell them you want the job.

Good luck!

Thanks buddy.

hurricane1091

This went well. The company has a better work environment (lots of collaboration, fun stuff like ping pong tables and pool tables and what-not). Very strange for me, the VP of Business Tech just sat me down with a group of guys at their work area and we chatted for awhile. They really only have one network engineer. He seems cool and a smart guy with a similar skill set and a similar network. They don't really know what they are looking for and said if I was willing to learn from others and try to get some programming skills, then it might be a good fit. Basically told him I was unable to learn programming four years ago or so, but I would try again and I think it would go better. Anyways, that's about it. I realized I'm a rough around the edges guy, no BS coming from me. I can see how that might be hard to handle for people, but I don't think I can change.

hurricane1091

Amazingly they offered me a job.

DoubleNNs

Congrats on the job offer!!
Do you plan to take it?