Evolution of managed networks
First, to understand what the ideal state of network management is, let’s take a brief overview of the current state of network operations before taking a deep look at operating networks with automation later in the chapter.
Manually managed networks
Most networks fall into the category of not being automated. That is, when a request or outage happens, a qualified network administrator reviews the situation, makes a determination on what to do, and addresses the situation. This leaves little room for documenting the changes, is error-prone, and generally leads to inconsistency in results such as configuration standards.
When a network administrator looks at a configuration that “seems out of the ordinary,” they are generally unable to understand when that configuration was added, who added that configuration, and, most importantly, why that configuration is there. This leads to following the status quo bias, often spoken as...
