How building a network automation content library accelerates efforts

CACI  has a rich heritage in network engineering, IT infrastructure, delivery assurance and network automation, including NetDevOps practices such as network coding, CI/CD pipeline optimisation, network lifecycle management and more. Our network automation experts engage in a variety of activities for our clients, a few of which include:

Telco (ISP)

• Build out of a NetBox NSoT (Network Source of Truth) and modelling of an ISP lab environment that allows for seamless network inventory management, such as VLANs, VRFs, IP linknets, cabling, chassis-to-blade mapping and more.

Telco (ISP)

• Build out of a Python Flask-based application (including frontend, backend and API) “LabDash” to enable management of changing Telco inventory, such as line cards, SFP transceivers, patching – within a lab environment used for Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 (TSA) testbed and network build-out activities.

Finance

• Build out of a customised observability solution to complement in-flight NMS, OSS and BSS tooling, with customised metrics around specific values of SNAT count, TCP session count and related for a complex load-balanced application solution.

Defence

• Build out of IaC blueprints to deploy complex NVA router, NVA firewall, Load Balancer ADC and other centralised infrastructure as part of an Azure landing zone deployment.

In everything we do, we always follow DevOps and software development practices, most notably being “DRY” (Don’t Repeat Yourself). As such, we are building a library of automations and network code that can benefit future clients through a faster delivery of NetDevOps solutions – leading to a flywheel of network affects, meaning the more we do for clients, the more we learn and can apply our shared learnings – and code libraries, modules and approaches – to accelerate network automation efforts for future clients.

Giving back to the network automation community

We know that we can’t do this alone, and equally to ensure we  attract and maintain top-quality NetDevOps talent and network automation consultants, we give back to the wider network automation community by building several tools within our public GitHub Repository. These include:

PAC File Performance Comparer 

PAC File Performance Comparer is intended to be run on an ad-hoc basis to allow for a quick comparison using the Pacparser to calculate both the time difference (i.e. performance optimisation gain of the JavaScript PAC code refactor) and conformity against a test set of URL behaviours (i.e. proxy or direct) for a “before” and “after” PAC (Proxy Auto-Configuration File) refactoring exercise.

Azure JSON IP Feed to Juniper SRX Checker

Azure JSON IP Feed to Juniper SRX Checker is intended to be run on a periodic (i.e. daily) basis to check for updates, changes or deletions made by Microsoft to their Azure IP Address Ranges as per the Microsoft-published Azure IP Ranges and Service Tags – Public Cloud JSON feed and convert into Junos SRX-compatible security policy syntax/configuration.

Adding to our sandpit

Whenever we develop a module, code, artefact or solution for a client, we always ensure that we contribute any non-sensitive elements of this network code back to our “sandpit”, which is a growing area of internal “scraps” of code and approaches that we use internally to accelerate our development of solutions for clients. This enables our NetDevOps engineers to accelerate their developments into clients’ environment and build on shared learnings within our wider network automation practice.

Below is just a small sample of some of the things we’ve already done and can do faster again – perhaps to help you if your NetDevOps is feeling more like NetDevOops:

• ajax-code-snippets
• azure-f5-bigip-ha-cluster-cfe-do
• azure-natgw-azlb-stress-tester
• azure-zscaler-ip-lookup-csv
• caci-ns-employee-profile-tools
• certificate-automation-python
• credly-certs-badging
• cytoscape-network-topology-viewer
• gartner-market-vendor-scraper
• hostnames-geoip
• megaport-api-provisioner
• network-weathermap-visualiser

Ready to turn your NetDevOops into NetDevOps?

At CACI, we’re well-versed across all areas of IT infrastructure – be that IT, delivery assurance, cloud, network or DevOps and systems administration. Our expert consultants have worked across a large spectrum of clients in varying stages of digital transformation, some with adherence to more agile-led delivery lifecycle, others with adherence to more waterfall-led delivery lifecycle – and have experience across a plethora of industry frameworks, from TOGAF to SAFe to more traditional ITIL deployments.

Get in touch and let us help you assure and stabilise your cloud, IT or network infrastructure to fulfil the four key DORA DevOps metrics in your company (or ask us what they are if you don’t already know) and accelerate your NetDevOps and SRE success!