Just as the hardest part of adopting DevOps is often cited to be breaking off one manageable goal at a time and focusing on that, I think we’ll find the same is true of DevNetOps. Before we even get there in networking, I think we need to scope the transformation properly of applying DevNetOps to the challenges of networking, especially with issues of basic physical connectivity and transport.
While “network automation” leads the mind to jump to things like applying configuration management tooling and programming today’s manual tasks, DevNetOps should remind us that there is a larger scope than mere automation coding. That scope includes culture, processes, design and tools. Collectively, they may all lead us to a happier place.
network automation capabilities are driven from the Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration portfolio for network automation and service orchestration. The three key components in Ericsson’s network automation offering are:
Orchestration - The Ericsson Orchestrator (EO) is an ETSI-MANO multi-domain orchestrator able to manage NFV infrastructure (NFVi), NFV Orchestrators and VNF Mangers, as well as multiple SDN-Controllers and physical network functions (PNFs). Its is an "orchestrator of orchestrators" providing both network and service orchestration capabilities. EO also provides network slice orchestration.
Assurance & Analytics - CENX Service Assurance provides closed loop network assurance and Ericsson Expert Analytics (EAA) provides AI/ML insights used to drive network automation decisions.
Continuous Delivery and Deployment - Ericsson’s continuous Deployment and Delivery (CDD) supports Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI-CD) of products and services significantly reducing development time and effort. It supports multi-vendor VNF onboarding and manages service lifecycle management.
Upgrades to network software and even firmware/microcode on devices could be managed automatically, by means of canary tests and rolling upgrade patterns. To do this on a per-box or per-port basis, or at finer levels of flows or traffic-processing components, we need to be able to orchestrate traffic balancing and draining.
More info: rf engineer
