Career in Network Automation: 10 Domains of Knowledge for Network Automation Engineering (Part 4)

In this article, I discuss ten domains of knowledge essential for a career in network automation engineering, i.e. roles such as Network Automation Engineer, Network DevOps (NetDevOps), and NRE.

More on the shifting landscape of the network engineering career

We discussed the shifting landscape of the network engineering career earlier and why you must take an action now. In this article, I want to dig deeper into the Network Automation Engineer, the NetDevOps, and NRE roles and double-click into the related domains of knowledge or the building blocks. Hang in there. Be right back. In the previous videos, we discussed the ten domains of knowledge that you need to master to become a network automation expert.

Observability

OBSERVABILITY is one of them. It means the software and processes of infrastructure and application monitoring, log management, and troubleshooting. For infra monitoring, you want to learn tools such as Nagios, Zabbix, etc. For application monitoring, the well-known tools are NewRelic and Cisco AppDynamics. For Log management, the popular choices are Splunk and Elastic Stack. Troubleshooting in the DevOps roles is about using the logging, monitoring, and telemetry data and use it for alerting the Apps and the CICD pipeline. Observability is the cornerstone of Ops roles so we’re talking about NetDevOps and NRE roles.

When I passed the Cisco DevNet exam topics, I could only find observability topics in the DEVCOR and DEVOPS exams which as you know are part of the DevNet Professional curriculum.

Cloud Providers

CLOUD PROVIDERS is yet another area if you don’t know it already. To begin with, you need to understand the cloud deployment and service models. What am I talking about? The cloud deployment models such as private, public hybrid and multi-cloud and the cloud service models such as Infrastructure as a service or IaaS, software as a service or SaaS, and Platform as a service or PaaS. The application development takes place in the cloud such as the AWS and Azure. Logging, monitoring, and tooling as we just discussed are also hosted in the cloud or delivered from the cloud. Finally, you gotta learn the cloud design patterns, i.e. how you configure and manage traits of availability, reliability, security, performance, and scalability in the cloud. Cloud is a universal topic, so it is relevant to all network automation roles and likewise is covered in just about all DevNet exams in some shape or form. Now, we’re still left with the last 2 knowledge areas of Operations and communication and collaboration, so look out for one more articles in this series.

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