Overview

The Introducing Automation for Cisco Solutions (CSAU) v1.2 course gives you a broad overview of network automation skills. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on labs, you will learn the fundamentals of automation such as working on model-driven programmability solutions with Representational State Transfer Configuration Protocol (RESTCONF) and Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) protocols. The course also covers data formats and types, including Extensible Markup Language (XML), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), Yaml Ain’t Markup Language (YAML), and Yet Another Next Generation (YANG), and their value in network automation, along with DevOps tools such as Ansible and Git.

This course is a requirement prior to enrolling in professional-level automation courses and exams because it provides crucial foundational knowledge essential to success:

Skills Covered

After taking this course, you should be able to:

Articulate the role network automation and programmability play in the context of end-to-end network management and operations
Define and differentiate between waterfall and agile software development methodologies
Interpret and troubleshoot Python scripts with fundamental programming constructs built for network automation use cases
Describe how DevOps principles, tools, and pipelines can be applied to network operations
Understand the role of network automation development environments and associated technologies such as Python virtual environments, Vagrant, and Docker
Understand and construct HTTP-based application programming interface (API) calls to network devices
Articulate the differences among and common use cases for XML, JSON, YAML, and protocol buffer (protobuf)
Construct and interpret Python scripts using the Python requests module to automate devices that have HTTP-based APIs
Understand the role YANG plays in network automation
Understand that several tools exist to simplify working with YANG models
Describe the functionality of RESTCONF and NETCONF and the differences between them
Construct Ansible playbooks to configure network devices and retrieve operational state data from them
Build Jinja2 templates and YAML data structures to generate desired state configurations

Who Should Attend

This course is designed primarily for customer engineers and systems engineers in the following job roles:

Automation Architects
Automation Engineers
Consulting Systems Engineers
DevOps Engineers
Network Administrators
Network Architects
Network Consulting Engineers
Network Design Engineers
Network Engineers
Network Operators
Network Reliability Engineers
Sales Engineers
Site Reliability Engineers
Systems Engineers
Technical Solutions Architects
Application Developers
Collaboration Developers
Collaboration Solutions Architects
IT Directors
Mobile Developers
Network Operations Center (NOC) Managers
Software Architects
Web Developers

Course Curriculum

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this training. However, the knowledge and skills you are recommended to have before attending this training are:

Routing and switching including open shortest path first (OSPF), border gateway protocol (BGP), and basic configuration features such as interfaces, simple network management protocol (SNMP), and static routes
Fundamentals of Python data structures and programming constructs, such as loops, conditionals, and classes, or the equivalent of 3–6 months of experience writing Python scripts
Basic Linux commands for navigating the file system and executing scripts
Knowledge of working with text editors

The following recommended Cisco offering may help you meet these prerequisites: