Juniper Networks accelerates adoption of Network Automation

Juniper Networks has announced a breadth of new offerings to accelerate the industry’s adoption of automation practices. With this latest announcement, Juniper is unveiling a collaborative community that includes tools, labs, libraries and an exchange of innovative applications to accelerate automation adoption for companies and individuals. Juniper EngNet features access to virtual devices that run in the cloud, complete with documentation, along with a full suite of tools to move from manual to automated operations. To complement Juniper EngNet, Juniper designed NRE Labs, a web-based, on-demand automation curriculum focused on the emerging network reliability engineering (NRE) role.

Despite nearly two decades of industry effort to drive network automation, network operations are still dominated by manual operations issued through the command line interface (CLI). Migrating an industry from 70-per cent CLI to 70-per cent automation requires industry-wide rethinking of the approach to network automation. If automation is to become a mainstream practice, the industry needs to do more than create new products. The success—or failure—of automation in networking will depend as much on the people as on the technology.

With the offerings released today, Juniper is making the individuals behind network operations—not the vendors and their products—the centerpiece of this industry evolution. JuniperEngNet and supporting tools and services are about moving individuals forward in both their skillsets and careers. By providing tools, virtual resources and a collaborative community for free, Juniper is putting customers first. Through hands-on practice and experimentation, these new offerings aim to ease and accelerate the adoption of automation across network operations, processes and workflows.

· Juniper EngNet consolidates a full spectrum of automation tools, resources and social communities into one single site. The site features API documentation, access to various Juniper Labs, virtual resources, a learning portal and an Automation Exchange of useful network automation tools. JuniperEngNetis aimed at elevating the entire networking community to move beyond only knowing the incumbent’s CLI knowledge and toward anautomated, abstracted self-driving technology. The networking community, including Juniper customers and partners, can contribute to the Automation Exchange within the community.

· NRE Labs provides engineers and network operators an intuitive in-browser experience with quick-paced and interactive network automation lessons that focus on real-life workflows like troubleshooting, verification and configuration. Inspired by the site reliability engineering (SRE) movement, with NRE Labs, network reliability engineer scan freely practice their automation proficiency and apply their learnings. In doing so, they can confidently automate workflows in their own network using the open tools from the lessons. Built as an open-source project, NRE Labs can now be accessed by anyone interested in advancing their automation expertise free of charge.

· Cloud Customer Certification Labs (CCL) provides users with a platform in the Juniper cloud to design and run a virtual lab environment consisting of networking systems, traffic generators and other network automation tools, such as Juniper’s Network Implementation and Test Automation (NITA). For users without their own physical labs or those who want to supplement their labs with Juniper’s cloud, Cloud CCL provides network engineers with a critical environment for automated testing and staging.

· Juniper’s extended service offerings provide a variety of educational, professional and advanced engineering services to improve network automation capabilities. For example, Juniper Testing-as-a-Service (TaaS) uses the new Cloud CCL to replicate customer network topologies, configurations, traffic flows and real-life environments, validating all planned changes and to emulate future requirements. Cloud CCL helps users validate specific functionalities of scheduled upgrades or changes, mitigating any risk to the production network. Juniper Automation and DevOps training courses are now also available at introductory and intermediate levels, along with exams to certify engineers at JNCIA and JNCIS, respectively. Additionally, as part of Juniper’s global OpenLab Network Automation Throwdown Program, Juniper is offering new events for network engineers interested in using NRE Labs and Cloud CCL in person.