Considering the automation through Agile development processes, the software development industry has experienced a massive shift towards NetDevOps. The credit goes to its underlying network infrastructure offering network automation to fast-paced modern businesses.
Since the non-DevOps approach hovers around tools, developers may experience a lack of traceability, testing, and collaboration. Here NetDevOps can help you cop with these limitations and eliminate security vulnerabilities while ensuring expected performance.
Similarly, there’s a glut of things you need to know about NetDevOps if you’re looking to incorporate it into your development process. This guide will lead you to the various NetDevOps components and obstacles for a better understanding.
What is NetDevOps and Why is it Worth Using?
As the term describes itself, NetDevOps is a technical blend of Networking and DevOps. It streamlines the DevOps principles for the deployment and management of network services. If we dig deeper, NetDevOps apply CI/CD DevOps concepts to networking activities for faster delivery.
In addition to this, its automated workflows bolster the abstraction, codification, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) implementation. NetDevOps also eliminate the configuration drift to embed quality and resiliency within the network.
In a nutshell, it improves agility by driving clear workflows aiding auditing, governance, and troubleshooting.
Challenges You May Face During NetDevOps Development
Risk Aversion
One of the challenges that organizations may face during NetDevOps development is risk aversion. Many companies are hesitant to adopt new technologies and practices due to the fear of potential failures or disruptions to their existing network infrastructure.
This risk aversion can hinder the adoption of NetDevOps methodologies, which emphasize automation, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. To address this challenge, organizations need to focus on building trust by demonstrating the benefits and success stories of NetDevOps implementation.
Technical Debt
Technical debt refers to the accumulated shortcuts, workarounds, and suboptimal code or configurations that result from rushed or incomplete implementation of network automation processes. This can lead to various issues, including increased complexity, reduced maintainability, and decreased scalability.
To mitigate technical debt, organizations should prioritize code quality, conduct regular code reviews, and follow established best practices and coding standards. Implementing automated testing frameworks and leveraging continuous integration and delivery pipelines can help identify and address technical debt early in the development process.
Skills Shortage
NetDevOps development requires a unique set of skills that combine network engineering, software development, and automation expertise. However, finding individuals with a strong skill set in these areas can be challenging due to the shortage of qualified professionals.
To address this issue, organizations can invest in training and upskilling their existing network and IT teams. This can include providing access to relevant courses, certifications, and hands-on training programs. Collaboration with external training providers or universities can also help bridge the skills gap.
Documentation
Effective documentation plays a crucial role in NetDevOps development, as it ensures that network configurations, automation workflows, and troubleshooting processes are well-documented and accessible to the team. However, maintaining up-to-date and comprehensive documentation can be challenging, especially when changes occur rapidly in dynamic network environments.
Organizations can address this challenge by adopting documentation frameworks and tools that facilitate automated documentation generation. Version control systems, wiki platforms, and collaborative document editing tools can also help streamline the documentation process.
Unstandardized Data
NetDevOps development relies on gathering and analyzing network data to drive automation and decision-making processes. However, network data can be highly diverse and unstandardized, making it challenging to extract meaningful insights and build reliable automation workflows.
Organizations should invest in data normalization and standardization techniques to ensure consistency and compatibility across different data sources. This can include using standardized data models, implementing data transformation pipelines, and leveraging data analytics tools for data cleansing and preprocessing.
Tool Limitations
NetDevOps development often requires the use of various tools and technologies, including network configuration management systems, automation frameworks, and orchestration platforms. However, tool limitations can arise, such as a lack of integration capabilities, limited scalability, or inadequate support for specific network devices or protocols.
To overcome these challenges, organizations should thoroughly evaluate and choose tools that align with their specific requirements and network environment. They should also consider open-source solutions that offer flexibility and community support.
Top NetDevOps Components
Modularity
Modularity is a key component of NetDevOps, enabling the creation of flexible and scalable network architectures. By breaking down network systems into modular components, organizations can easily adapt and scale their networks as per evolving requirements.
Modularity facilitates the deployment of microservices, allowing for the independent development and deployment of specific network functionalities. This approach not only enhances agility but also simplifies troubleshooting and maintenance, as issues can be isolated to specific modules.
For instance, using containerization technologies like Docker, network functions can be encapsulated within lightweight, portable containers, ensuring consistent behavior across different environments.
Example 1 – Multiple applications in a single VPC network architecture
Example 2 – Single application per VPC network architecture
Cultural Changes
Cultural changes play a crucial role in successfully implementing NetDevOps. Traditionally, network and operations teams operated in silos, with limited collaboration between them. However, NetDevOps encourages a cultural shift towards increased collaboration, communication, and shared responsibility.
By fostering a DevOps culture, organizations can break down barriers between different teams, promoting a collaborative approach to network management. This cultural shift involves embracing shared goals, establishing cross-functional teams, and encouraging continuous learning and skill development.
Automation and Infrastructure as Code
Automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) are pivotal components of NetDevOps, enabling organizations to achieve faster and more efficient network deployments. Automation eliminates manual, error-prone tasks and accelerates the provisioning and configuration of network devices.
Tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef enable the automation of network device configurations, ensuring consistency and reducing human errors. Infrastructure as Code allows network infrastructure to be defined and managed through machine-readable configuration files, promoting version control and reproducibility.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices are integral to NetDevOps, enabling organizations to rapidly and reliably deploy network changes. CI/CD pipelines automate the process of integrating code changes, testing them, and deploying them to production environments.
This approach reduces the time and effort required for manual testing and deployment, minimizing the risk of errors and accelerating the delivery of network services. By leveraging tools like Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD, organizations can establish robust pipelines that facilitate frequent and automated testing, resulting in faster feedback loops and enhanced overall network quality.
Configuration Changes
Configuration changes are a fundamental aspect of NetDevOps, allowing organizations to manage network devices’ configurations effectively. Traditional manual configuration methods are time-consuming and error-prone, especially in complex network environments.
NetDevOps leverages tools and frameworks like YAML, JSON, or Python scripting to define and manage network device configurations programmatically. These configuration changes can be version-controlled, tested, and deployed as part of the CI/CD pipeline, ensuring consistency and minimizing configuration drift.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, NetDevOps is revolutionizing the way network operations are conducted, offering a comprehensive approach that combines network engineering and software development principles. By integrating automation and CI/CD pipelines, organizations can streamline their network management processes, improve efficiency, and enhance network security.
However, implementing NetDevOps is not without its challenges. Overcoming cultural resistance, acquiring the necessary skills, ensuring network reliability, and addressing security concerns are some of the obstacles that organizations may encounter.
Despite these challenges, the benefits of embracing NetDevOps are significant. Organizations that successfully navigate the hurdles stand to gain a competitive edge in the dynamic digital landscape.
