Programmers with network engineering skills (was Re: Networking Knowledge?)
Guillaume FORTAINE
For your information :
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-February/045975.html
Best Regards,
Guillaume FORTAINE
On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Guillaume FORTAINE
<gfor...@gfortaine.biz> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
>> Do DevOps folks (hiphop or otherwise) have to understand the networking
>> technologies to do their jobs?
>
> You should have a look at the Packet Pushers podcast to strengthen
> your networking knowledge :
>
> http://packetpushers.net/
>
> And, anyway, NetOps folks are taking a look at DevOps :-) :
>
> http://etherealmind.com/complex-systems-complex-failures-cloud-computing/
>
> "DevOps
>
> The use of multiple data centre locations, or multiple cloud
> providers, will require additional investment in the relatively new
> field of ìdevelopment operations” or DevOps. This this role look
> something like system administration but with much wider scope and
> expertise, the programming team for the operations of the
> infrastructure must also be to integrate network, storage,
> virtualization, firewall, load balancer into a fully functional
> operational platform – consider system administrators writing bash
> scripts for Linux administration, but expanded to include all elements
> of the datacenter."
>
>
>
>> 3. Do you ever manipulate it programmatically?
>
> The OpenFlow/Software Defined Network paradigm perfectly fit the
> Infrastructure-as-Code paradigm :
>
> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/82/sdn.html
>
> "Software Driven Networks (sdn) (BoF)"
>
>
> http://www.lucidvision.com/mailman/listinfo/sdnp
>
> "Software Driven Network Protocol BOF mailing list. Discussions around
> the SDN and the proposed BOF for the Taipei IETF meeting in November."
>
>
> By the way, Cloudscaling published an "IaaS Builder’s Guide – Network
> Edition" last year :
>
> http://www.cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/updated-iaas-builders-guide/
>
>
> However OpenFlow technology is still not ready for the average
> enterprise DevOps guy :
>
> http://etherealmind.com/will-sdn-openflow-used-enterprise/
>
> "In my *current* opinion the early adopters for SDN/OpenFlow are going
> to be in just one areas: Hyperscale Data Centres. Companies like
> Google, Yahoo, Rackspace etc have a specific problem that Flow
> Forwarding can solve. The primary problem is the total number of VLANs
> available."
>
>
> That's why a project like the NOC Project could be a great starting
> point to start a "DevNetOps" :
>
> http://kb.nocproject.org/display/SITE/NOC
>
> "Configurable and scriptable »
> pyRules | REST/JSON | Event Triggers | Schedules"
>
>
>
>> My guess is those coming at devops from an operations and
>> systems administration background are very likely to have
>> strong networking knowledge, those like me from more of a
>> development background less so.
>
>
>> If you're a developer, wouldn't expect them to require you to be fluent
>> in the whole OSI stack, for example, but it wouldn't harm to know what it is.
>> For my perspective I'd mostly be expecting developers to think in terms
>> of mostly layer 7 (application) rather than the fine details of how data gets
>> from point a to point b, with possibly a bit of understanding about the
>> implications of lower layers on upper layers.
>
> http://packetpushers.net/opinion-network-automation-build-or-buy/#comment-297882099
>
> "I completly agree with Mike. A programmer for the network team is
> absolutely necessary, in fact, during my years as project manager, I
> observed than she can add more value than anyone in the team.
> Programmers are really important for automation, I have had several
> bad experiencies with the CiscoWorks and even worse problems with
> Alcatel, however a colleague of mine developed an ACL+config manager
> using a CVS very similar to the one you described that saved us
> hundreds of hours and troubleshooting errors, we had several
> customized scripts that made Cisco Works LMS obsolete, etc.
>
> But programmers are not only important for automation, as they can
> help the network team to "sell themselves". They can help to make much
> more professional reports including the data in a well-structured
> database and using BI tools to extract information, using scoreboards,
> integrating your data with the data of other deparments, etc.
>
> And the best thing is that normally they can be easily reconverted
> also in sysadmins, to manage all the operative systems of servers that
> end up in network team (DNS, DHCP, AAA, ...)
>
> In my opinion a programmer and a clerk to manage all the
> administrative stuff (no matter how technical your team us, there is
> always a lot of administrative stuff to do) should be mandatory in any
> medium-big size NOC."
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Guillaume FORTAINE
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 7:25 PM, Vikas Deolaliker
> <vikas.de...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Do DevOps folks (hiphop or otherwise) have to understand the networking
>> technologies to do their jobs? If so which ones? For example, do devops
>> folks need to know what is datacenter fabric technologies? Any load
>> balancing tips/tricks? Caching?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>> Vikas