A real-world use case for network automation in a Nautobot app
The app developed in Chapter 15 lets you enter device IP ACL configuration into Nautobot; the goal now is to take it one step further in the automation workflow and let Nautobot’s IP ACL information drive device configuration. This continues to highlight the value and relationship of network data and network automation we first talked about in Chapter 1. Having more data in Nautobot offers more value in driving even more automation directly from Nautobot.
Design requirements
There are three basic requirements for this solution:
- Must be able to record IP ACL definitions in Nautobot (already accomplished in Chapter 15)
- Nautobot must be able to render the full ACL config for a given device on demand
- Nautobot must be able to push the rendered config to that device on demand
As noted, this will build heavily on the IP ACLs data model that we developed an App for in Chapter 15.