How Network Engineers can learn automation using Cisco DevNet Interview with CCIE Hank Preston

hey what's up YouTube I'm the one Lightfoot today I'm here with Hank Preston he's a principal engineer and a CCIE with definite at Cisco okay how much man thanks for the time thanks for coming out hey I'm glad to be here at Cisco live so you've done some interesting things in the industry you know it's it's an interesting time in the industry so I I got into networking honestly because I didn't want to be a developer like that's really where it comes back to you is I went to school I came out of school I thought I was gonna be a software developer and my first time looking at it I decided I hated coding in Java I just despised job no I just never clicked with me and so I looked for something else to do and I said you know infrastructure is kind of fun so I went into the infrastructure path and I weaved around and eventually made my way to network right I liked networking I liked though connecting things together yes like many network engineers I stumbled across the Cisco certifications and the programs and I worked my way up through CCNA and NP and and eventually ie super proud of having my high actually working on the research hey now as it goes through and here at Cisco I came through because I think it's every network engineers dream at some point to have a chance to carry a Cisco bass but what was interesting is when I came to Cisco it was it was as cloud and all of these new things were popping up and so I came into Cisco and immediately got cut put back in into looking at development again and so I've been working on kind of network automation and development at Cisco kind of sense Cisco got into it itself so not it's funny a lot of the things you mentioned like before I got in I was doing Java I didn't like the Java Virtual Machine that's frustrated me that I couldn't run the same code you know without a song the Java somewhere so that's similar but also I started out in Windows and doing PowerShell and batch files I don't really enjoy that what made you enjoy you know Network automation today yeah it's a great question and and we'll talk a bit about the journey but it really comes down to Python as a language is what sold me back on development I was I was tapped early on to be one of the first few engineers at Cisco to kind of start diving into that and cisco sent me to some Python training classes and I went ok that's sure taking out of the field for a little bit ok and I just fell in love with how easy Python was it didn't have compile it ran everywhere um we were putting Python on our network switches and routers so I could actually run Python code right at the edge and it's just it clicked and it was easy to work with it felt like English like it just made sense and so I was able to watch and in the early days of Python and networking it was really exciting because you you figure something out on your own and then somebody would do it way better and then offer a librarian code samples and so it's it's been this this great love affair between Python and networking where there's so many good ideas that are there and I like to joke that we steal or borrow from other folks to make it easy and you don't have to do it yourself you're not on your own and and the community has been really open and inviting about finding good ways to do pieces and so I put my interest in development solely at the feet of Python is a language right well there's so many nuggets that you gave right there one was that you don't have to basically write your own code there's cold ready-made scripts that are out there and people should embrace cut collaboration I do it's it's if we joke a little bit I think that at the heart of a lot of network engineers there's this this bit of fear about like sharing too much and and if somebody else knows something and then it's not my job anymore and job security is a big issue and there's the joke that like knowledge is not a zero-sum game if I teach you something that doesn't mean that I don't know it anymore and and I think that that's been this openness that this program ability has gone through between folks like yourself out there on the social media sharing what we know we've doing a ton of stuff in dev net to try to get material out there there's email learning courses to learn Python for engineers YouTube videos all over the place it seems like the community has opened up to share and I love that that part about network automation and programmability it seems like it's opened it up way more than it ever felt like it was before that's great so how can network engineers are today utilized it's just a definite to prepare we're not even prepared to better position yourself as a network engineer today yeah it's it's a fantastic question so I've been at Cisco for about 10 years I was originally a Solutions Architect and systems engineer helping customers kind of figure out what Cisco tech to go through and I joined dead net about two and a half years ago for one very specific reason is I was out there talking with customers talking with networking tnews and I was just getting really frustrated because I'd be out there and I'd see network engineers questioning the future of the industry questioning the future of did I make the right choice being a network engineer Sdn is everywhere I'm hearing that that certifications don't make any sense anymore and they just didn't know what to do and so I talked with Mandi Whaley our director here in deaf nad and Susie we the VP and I said you know I would love to come over and help build up material and give something to network engineers so they don't have to feel like they're on their own give them a jumping-off give them some good ideas and get network engineers excited about being network engineers again and that's what really drove me to dev net and I'm really proud of what we've done over the last two years and not all on her own along that same time the community is blown up all over the place and so now if you are a network engineer and you're worried about evolving your skillset and picking up programmability don't worry so much just be open to trying new things come on over to dev net I actually did they set me in in San Jose Cisco's headquarters for about two weeks in front of a green screen recording a video series that we titled Network programmability basics yeah so we've got 26 videos and I wrote them specifically so that if you've never done programmability I take you through the basics and jump start you like two months ahead in your journey give you enough foundation knowledge so that you can start asking questions and then dive into other material explore on your own we've got the start now section of dev net so you can go to our website slash start now get pointers to different labs to go through i'm join the social community if you haven't done that yet follow dev net on Cisco follow lab every day there's so many people that are out there willing to give you suggestions to go through it's really almost overwhelming with how much choices you have now less than not having it out yes so often when it you mentioned DevOps right I think as network engineer especially those that are looking to become network engineers the tournament they think developers but we're actually work engineer with so with that being say there's something a lot of organizations are working towards and that's infrastructure is called how do engineers yeah it's a great question so the DevOps transition that hits the software development space and like applications has been amazing and has offered so many benefits to organizations and that we're trying to figure out how can we learn from those principles inside of infrastructure inside a networking and so I talked a lot about net DevOps right and it's the idea there is taking the DevOps culture and ideas and principles and figure out how to apply them effectively to networking because I joke in the software world if you make an update well you can deploy a brand new application and destroy your old one I don't know any company that if you have to add a new VLAN to your data center you're allowed to build an entirely new data center network and then throw away the old one right and so those concepts don't translate one-for-one but the ideas are still there and so that's what we're trying to do in that DevOps is figure that out infrastructures code is this interesting concept it's it started and fundamentally it's a cloud concept right so we do infrastructures code and how did deploy things to AWS or Google or OpenStack and you can do networks and infrastructures code you can find all sorts of scripts that will do that I talked about network as code because infrastructures code is so much focused on what happens inside of a cloud but what about the network that it takes to build the cloud right the stuff that's underneath because what is the cloud but somebody else's data system so there's there's the network under the hood of the cloud what about the network that it takes to get to the cloud your wide area network the connectivity between them what about your wireless network and your campus network that goes through to me that's Network is code and I see so many people focused on infrastructures code inside of the cloud that I started talking about network is code how can we do those same principles for our entire network not just the easy stuff in the cloud and that's I think where this transition with network automation is gonna be huge is as we kind of start tackling the harder problems dealing with physical infrastructure the infrastructure under the hood the connectivity the stuff that is the backbone of every network we can't ignore that anymore we have to bring that into the loops of DevOps and all these other pieces I see I see you guys some great information hey we're here at Cisco live in there's so many different bull singing learning opportunities here Cisco live online at the definite sandbox and just Debra's period exactly excited time I want to thank you for coming on in the channel I was happy to man fellow Ohioan I can't believe we live two hours apart and we had to come to Spain man yeah come to Spain all right thanks you

Channel: Du’An Lightfoot

Views: 7,665

Rating: 4.9633026 out of 5

Keywords: How Network Engineers use DevNet Interview with CCIE Hank Preston, How Network Engineers can learn automation using Cisco DevNet Interview with CCIE Hank Preston, cisco devnet, network automation, cisco devnet sandbox, python, network engineer, cisco, ccie, ccna, ccnp, hank preston

Id: JByC5BHtWWo

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2019