How to Automate Data Gathering Processes from CLI & API Sources as Part of an Itential Workflow
See how to eliminate time spent on the manual process of data gathering & include it as steps built into full end-to-end network automations with Itential.
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When network teams start automating their manual processes, most of the focus is put on successfully automating the specific network change itself. While this is important, one often overlooked aspect is the data gathering processes required to automate a network change. For example, data gathering can occur at multiple points of the automated process — at the beginning when requesting data such as an IP address from an IPAM, as part of a pre-check process to ensure that conditions are correct for a network change, or as part of a post-check process to verify that conditions are correct after a network change has been made.
Without automating the data gathering process within an automated process workflow, network teams find that even though they can automate network changes, they still spend a lot of time performing manual processes, gathering data from IPAMs, network controllers, and other IT systems. The Itential Automation Platform simplifies and normalizes these processes so network teams can gather required data from all their network devices, controllers, and IT systems for use in a workflow.
In this demo, Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing at Itential, shows how Itential Automation Platform users can:
• Use Command Templates to gather data using CLI methods.
• Gather data using API methods from an onboarded integration.
• Create a Data Transformation to handle return data and formatting.
• Implement and test multi-layered pre-check and post-check workflows.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction & Overview of Demo
03:20 Data Gathering for CLI & API Sources
05:00 Process for Gathering Data From API Sources
10:53 API Data Gathering Example: NetBox
18:12 Extracting & Transforming Data to Different Formats with JSON Schema
29:25 Using Command Templates to Gather Data From CLI/Hardware Sources
42:10 Verifying Command Template Results Based on Gathered Data
44:00 Building Data Evaluation Steps in an Automation Workflow
46:38 Running Your Workflow End-to-End & Verifying Results
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Itential is the leading platform for network automation and orchestration. With the Itential Automation Platform, NetOps teams can deploy services faster, simplify network change management, maintain security with standardized configuration management and automate network operations at scale.
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