[j-nsp] Network automation vs. manual config

[Job Snijders]

Dear Antti,

On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 01:54:27PM +0300, Antti Ristimäki wrote:
> This is something that I've been thinking quite a lot, so I would be
> delighted to hear some comments, experiences or recommendations. 
> 
> So, now that more and more of us are automating their network, there
> will be the question about how to manage the configurations, if they
> are partially automated and partially manually maintained. This will
> be the case especially while transitioning from a pure CLI jockey
> network towards a more automated one. There are probably multiple
> approaches to solve this, but below are a few of them:
> 
> One option is to generate the whole config automatically e.g. from a
> template or a database and just _not_accepting_ any manual
> configurations at all. Then when there are needs to do something
> custom not yet supported by the automation tools, instead of manually
> configuring it one would take some additional time and build the
> support into the automation tools. The cost for this might be that
> deploying something new/custom/tailor-made might take a bit more time
> compared to just manually configuring it, but in a long run the
> benefits are obvious. I'm personally preferring this approach.
> 
> Generating the _whole_ configuration automatically off-line from the
> scratch makes it also easy to remove elements from the configuration,
> as the auto-generated config can completely replace the existing
> running-config.

The above paragraph is in a nutshell how NTT's AS 2914 network operates.
I can strongly recommend the approach.

A presentation is available here:

    https://ripe69.ripe.net/wp-content/uploads/presentations/29-201411-ripe.pdf
    https://ripe69.ripe.net/archives/video/178/

Kind regards,

Job