Profile, test and verify your network is running smoothly with pyATS

Season 1, Talk 8 of NetDevOps Live! Kevin Corbin is back discussing the free network test framework from Cisco, pyATS!
Full details at bit.ly/2AEfP95
Presenter: Kevin Corbin / kecorbin
Topics Covered - Time Links
- Introduction
- Continuous Network Verification Vision 1:23
- A brief history of pyATS & Genie 3:11
- pyATS Framework 5:19
- pyATS - it does things 6:20
- Testbed 8:09
- Test Cases 13:04
- Genie - it does stuff 18:31
- genie.ops, genie.conf, & genie.sdk 19:42
- Autoparser 23:51
- Triggers and Verifications 24:44
- Integrations: Robot Framework 26:46
- Robot Keywords 29:58
- Live Q/A 30:25
- Genie parsers and open source 30:32
- Parsing output from sources other than pyATS 31:52
- Demos 33:37
- Interactive pyATS 33:41
- Inspecting device links 36:20
- Discover the routing table 37:10
- Learning about BGP with pyATS 38:52
- Generating and managing BGP device config 40:34
- Test Cases and pyATS 44:05
- A BGP neighbor test case 46:02
- easypy - pyATS test case runtime 46:54
- CRC test case and Robot 50:43
- Summary 52:58
- Webinar Resources 53:33
- Code Exchange Challenge 54:18
Episode Description:
For years we have tested networks the same way, with ping. "Can you ping it?" "It's pingable?" "Uh oh... I lost a ping?" All statements you've undoubtedly heard, and said yourself. The problem is, 'ping' doesn't actually tell you much about the state of your network. Ping doesn't tell you if your routing protocols are working as expected. Ping doesn't tell you if you are seeing interfaces flapping. Ping doesn't tell you if you have a memory leak that will cause an outage in the near (or distant) future. Ping is a terrible network test tool...but we have a better one now.
pyATS, or Python Automation Test Systems, is a free network testing framework from Cisco with Open Source roots. With pyATS, you can actually test your network and answer questions like the ones ping failed miserably at. Start by profiling your network to learn what protocols are running, and their current state. With the profile, you now have a baseline of platform state that you can track overtime and monitor for deviations that hint at an underlying problem. Build test cases to run following changes to ensure the network is working before you get the call from the application team. Tests can be as simple as verify count '3' 'ospf neighbors' on device 'core1' . Join this session to learn all about pyATS, and how you can get started today!
NetDevOps Live! is produced by Cisco DevNet. Details can be found at developer.cisco.com/netdevops... and follow NetDevOps Live! on Twitter at / netdevopslive

[@unknownuser1904]

Great Presentation and Content.
Was searching for Kevin Corbin's profile and found out that he sadly passed away in an accident which happened on October 2020. May his soul Rest in Peace. He seemed to be a gem of a person.

[@steeple001]

Thanks Kevin Very useful presentation, we are pushing this into our production enviroment to help build our NetDevops CI/CD pipes. Great tools

[@XanderPetty]

Will PyATS and Genie be supported on ARM devices? A centrally located RaspberryPi 3 would be perfect for this.

[@WestWander]

Is there any option to send the CommonSetup() object to the TestCase so that the test case can access some data from CommonSetup object.

[@idontknow-ms8mc]

Is this something I can test on my home network?