Automation and orchestration
Automation and orchestration may or may not be individual building blocks within a network automation architecture. For the purposes of simplification (and how most of the industry views it), we have collapsed automation and orchestration into a section here. But functionally, they are different functional blocks, as shown in Figure 12.1. It may be obvious that automation and orchestration make up a large portion of any network automation design, given it is this block that coordinates tasks and workflows and executes all communication with the network infrastructure. In general, we look at automation as the execution of tasks and orchestration as the ability to stitch different tasks or automations together.
For the purpose of this section, we will concentrate on automation and orchestration interactions with Nautobot as an SoT and the role Nautobot can play as a network automation platform.
Before we dive into the tech, let’s take a step...