GitNops - A Flox enabled network automation toolkit

GitNops is an operational framework that takes DevOps best practices used for application development, such as:

• version control
• collaboration
• compliance
• CI/CD
• continuous monitoring

and applies them to network automation.

Benefits of a Flox-enabled toolkit

• Tools are Omnipresent
• Vendor-Agnostic CI/CD
• Single CI/CD Action

Benefits of GitNops + Flox

• Repeatability – The very act of modeling your infrastructure in code provides repeatability. Every configuration element is captured in the code and will enforce that defined configuration each and every time it is run. IaC provides confidence that the infrastructure is configured and operating in the way it is supposed to be.
• Automation – The very act of abstracting out infrastructures brings us the benefits of automation.
• Agility – Utilizing collaborative automation techniques like configuration management provide a confidence in the various versions of the code base. This allows an engineer or administrator to roll forward or backward if a problem were encountered. Logs of who did what, when, are available and can be analyzed to determine who or what caused the problem. This minimizes the average time to fix problems (MTTR) and encourages root cause analysis.
• Scalability – Repeatability plus automation makes scalability much easier, especially when combined with the rapid hardware provisioning that the cloud provides.
• Reassurance – The fact that the architecture, design, and implementation of our infrastructure is modeled in code means that we can automatically have documentation. Any programmer can look at the source code and see at a glance how the systems work. This is a welcome change from the common scenario in which only a single sysadmin or architect holds the understanding of how the system hangs together. That is risky- this person is now able to hold the organization ransom, and should they leave or become ill, the company is endangered.
• Disaster Recovery – In the event of a catastrophic event that wipes out the production systems, if your entire infrastructure has been broken down into modular components and described as code, recovery is as simple as provisioning new compute power, restoring from backup, and deploying the infrastructure and application code. What may have been a business ending event in the old paradigm of custom-built, partially automated infrastructure becomes a manageable few hour outage, potentially delivering competitive value over those organizations suffering from the same external influences, but without the power and flexibility brought about by infrastructure as code.

Public Appearances

GitNops has been the topic of conversation on a number of recent podcasts.

Packet Pushers Heavy Networking Podcast #706

The GitNops Approach to Collaborative Networking direct download to the podcast. Packet Pushers Heavy Networking link to GitNops podcast.

Packet Pushers Total Network Operations #3

Packet Pushers Heavy Total Network Operations DevOps, NetOps and Batman Part 1 link.

Packet Pushers Total Network Operations #4

Packet Pushers Heavy Total Network Operations DevOps, NetOps and Batman Part 2 link.

Network Automation Nerds #84

Network Automation Nerds, GitNops Zero to Hero link.

F5 DevCentral Interview with Buu Lam and Jason Rahm

Link to discussion about GitNops.

Training

GitNops trainings have been provided in the past and you can schedule them here.

Previous GitNops Trainings

GitNops was presented to the Open Network User Group (ONUG Board) and was a four hour training at ONUG Spring 2023.