Part 3 — Essential Tools for NetDevOps Beginners
Understanding Tool Landscape Without Overwhelm
The NetDevOps tool ecosystem is vast: Ansible, Terraform, Python, Kubernetes, Prometheus, Docker, and dozens more. New engineers often experience “tool paralysis”—afraid to choose wrong, they choose nothing.
Here’s the strategic reality: you don’t need all tools immediately. Every successful automation starts with three foundational tools: a version control system (Git), an orchestration/automation platform (Ansible), and a scripting language (Python). Everything else builds on these three.
Git & GitHub: The Foundation
What It Does: Git tracks changes to files. GitHub is a hosted Git service with collaboration features.
Why Network Engineers Need It:
Every network configuration, every automation script, every design document should live in Git. This creates an audit trail, enables rollback, and facilitates collaboration.
Getting Started:
- Create a GitHub account (free tier is sufficient)
- Create a private repository for your network configs
- Commit your current router configurations
- Start tracking changes with meaningful commit messages
Real Use Case: One engineer spent 4 hours troubleshooting why BGP routes disappeared. With Git, they’d see exactly which configuration change caused it and could revert in 30 seconds.
Python: The Scripting Language for Network Automation
What It Does: Python is a general-purpose programming language with extensive libraries for networking tasks.
Why Python?
- Beginner-Friendly Syntax: Readability is paramount. Most network engineers can pick up Python basics in weeks
- Powerful Libraries: Netmiko abstracts SSH complexity. NAPALM provides vendor-agnostic APIs
- Real-World Examples: The network automation community shares thousands of Python scripts on GitHub
- Career Relevance: Python knowledge is valuable across many IT roles
What You Can Build:
- Pre/post-change validation scripts that gather device state before a change and compare after
- Automated alerting when network metrics exceed thresholds
- Config parsing to extract specific information (routes, VLANs, ACLs) from device output
- Automated reporting pulling data from multiple devices
Ansible: Infrastructure Orchestration Platform
What It Does: Ansible manages configurations across multiple devices using playbooks (YAML-formatted automation workflows).
Why Ansible for Networks?
- Agentless: No software required on network devices. Ansible connects via SSH
- Idempotent: Playbooks are safe to run repeatedly
- Multi-Vendor Support: Same playbook syntax works across Cisco, Juniper, Arista with conditional logic
- Human-Readable: YAML syntax is accessible to network engineers without deep coding knowledge
What You Can Accomplish:
- Deploy configurations to 100 routers in 5 minutes with a single playbook
- Collect device information (show version, show interfaces) from all devices into structured format
- Apply firmware updates safely across device fleet
- Generate backups of all device configs automatically
YAML & JSON: Data Formats for Automation
YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language): Human-readable data format used by Ansible, Terraform, and most modern tools.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation): Structured data format returned by APIs.
Network engineers don’t need to become YAML/JSON experts, but understanding these formats is essential for reading automation code and API responses.
REST APIs: Communicating with Network Devices
Modern network devices expose REST APIs alongside traditional CLI.
Why APIs Matter:
CLI works by sending text commands and parsing text responses. APIs return structured data (JSON). Parsing structured data is 100x easier than parsing CLI output.
Example: Retrieving BGP routes via API returns a JSON object with routes already separated. Via CLI, you get text that requires regex parsing.
Learning APIs:
Postman (free tool) lets you test APIs interactively. You send a request, see the response, understand the structure.
Most network APIs follow REST principles: GET retrieves data, POST creates resources, PUT updates, DELETE removes.
Essential Tool Stack for Day 1
To start your NetDevOps journey, you need:
- Git/GitHub – Version control for everything
- Python – Scripting for custom tasks
- Ansible – Multi-device orchestration
- Your IDE – VS Code (free) for editing files
- A lab – EVE-NG, GNS3, or vendor sandboxes for practice
This foundation covers 80% of real-world network automation tasks.
Advanced Tools You’ll Learn Later
After mastering fundamentals, explore:
- Terraform – Network infrastructure as code for cloud networks
- Prometheus/Grafana – Monitoring and observability
- Docker – Containerizing automation workflows
- Kubernetes – Orchestrating containerized network services
Key Takeaway
Tools are enablers, not endpoints. Master the foundational three (Git, Python, Ansible), then add tools specific to your use case. Every tool is replaceable; the principles remain constant.
Try this now: Install git, create a GitHub repo, clone it, and commit a simple README.md documenting your lab topology.
Next: Part 4 — Python for network automation (hands-on examples).