Automate APIs & Protocols

9. Netconf

Now, the next important topic we have is the net conference. So let's understand "net conf" and "net con" for network configuration protocol. One of the use cases for this, at least at this present time, is that if you check the Cisco SDWAN fabric, you'll find that the V manager inside the management plane is using netconfol to configure all the devices inside the data plane, or maybe pushing the configuration to the control plane via other controllers as well, like Smart. So that is one of the use cases. The other use case that I will show you here is that I'll go and log in to the CSR router.

There you will see that we have so many capabilities related to network configuration on netconf, which is important because this is something called a transaction based protocol. That means that if they do not do all the transactions, they will abort all the data. So until the data is transferred, unless they say otherwise, if you have any interruption, they will not send the rest of the data. The second important thing here is that you can see that the network is confirming that there are running candidates and a startup configuration. So not only do we have the running and startup configurations, but we also have something called the candidate configuration as well. And suppose if you want to put this configuration, this candidate configuration, so there is one command called commit. You can go ahead and do the commit, although we have commit verification, validation checks, et cetera.

So you can do a commit check; those things are also there, which means you're checking the commands that you want to put. So somewhere in between, you have some transactional data that is still not confirmed to push to the device that will be working as a candidate running. We know that it is serving the RAM and startup in the NVRAM, correct? So that's the thing we have now. Earlier, we discussed that NetCorp is a protocol. This is not your transport method. So the underlying transport, the underlying secure transport, we have the SSH, why we need net confidence That's the most important thing we have now. NetConfig is a new model for network management, and this is a transaction based network management protocol that has much more capability than what we can do with SNMP. And SNMP itself has problems, vulnerabilities, and restrictions that you cannot add. The SNMP MIPS libraries are preloaded inside the operating system. There are so many things. The most important thing we have with SNMP in terms of the problem or the restriction is that it's very tight and very vendor-specific. On the other hand, NetComp is widely used because, under the data model, it can be changed, it can be altered, and it is going to give you a number of capabilities that are not possible with SNMP, right?

So now that we have SNMP, even if you check the feature list between SNMP and NetConf, you'll find that NetConf has a huge advantage with respect to SNMP. Now that it can be integrated, the Internet can be integrated via API. And in this lab, we have seen that we are using the restrained API integration with Python. And you have seen how quickly it takes in input from the centralised management plan. Correct. So NETCONF is the protocol that most of the companies are looking at, and a few of the companies are actively using it as well. Now, what are the other features we have in the net comp? They are transactional-based; they are using the client server model. And what does it mean? I will show you in the diagram we have a follow up diagram to understand this client-based communication or client server based communication. Now again, I told you earlier that netconf is a protocol. So the encoding method is maybe XML or maybe JSON, correct? The transport and communication method may be SSH. So you can see that SSH is the transport protocol for the client server model.

So these things will be there. The good thing we have with NETCONF is its flexibility, features, and wide usability. Correct. So the protocol is stacked with the NETCONF here, and we can clearly see the protocol, the message, the RPC and RPC reply, the layers, and the example. Already, we have discussed that we have gifts and four methods. So in general, say Get, Put, Post, and Delete. So these are the methods we have, and apart from those, there are other methods as well. But these are the most widely used methods inside the risk API or full protocol. Now, one by one, you can see that we have explanations about the protocol. So what protocol is it using? The list of the protocol is associated version two SoapTLS. What messages we have, although we have a list of messages, few of the messages are listed here, like RPC, RPC replied to the operations, what operations and how they are going to do the operation, we'll see that. So this client and several communications are going to happen over SSH. Let me quickly show you that. Let me quickly log into the device and show you what it looked like. So here you can see that I logged into my lab, and this is my automation tool, and this is the CSR device. In the CSR device, what I have done is actually generate the crypto key, and we know how to do that.

You need to give the host name and the domain name. And then I have given SSH version two here, and then I have enabled two features, say, NETCONF and netconfying. That's it. After that, you will get the syslog message that your NETCONF is ready to run. You can go and connect like this again; I have set the username and password as "Cisco," but you can give any strong password. Now I try to communicate with the CSR device using SSH. Obviously, the underlying protocol is SSH, and now if I click into, you can see the capabilities that we have all the capabilities related to the network configured inside CSR We have the long list of features, so we have the data collection. We have the three OEM GRP enhancement pool entities; you can see the long list of features that are there inside the net confiscated; you can go and communicate again; we'll discuss more and more about this communication in upcoming slides. How exactly are we communicating now with the methods we have in place for the operation? Config. Edit. Delete. Copy. Lock. Unlock. Close session. Close the session okay. As the name suggests, "kill" means "kill the session." "Close" means close the session. Lock and lock It's a widely used thing that you can go and lock the operation, or you can lock the configuration for some period of time, et cetera, then delete. Edit. Copy, and these are the normal operations that we are doing.

Again, you can see the transaction method we have running a startup and candidate candidate means until you can go and do the commit confirm, it will not push to the device, and it will be there stored as an intermediate configuration, correct? Now that you can see how the communication is happening here, you can see that the client server model client will try to be my network automation client. He tried to send port number 830 with the SSH transport protocol to do the communication with the server. Now what is happening behind the scenes, here you can see these steps that I want to do the communication. For that, I just wanted to connect to the server. I will send my request, and then the server will send the response. Here, you can see the SSH that I have done to the device. Now once I send my request, I'll get the response with the correct capabilities, and we have a long list of capabilities. Once you log in, you can see these are the capabilities; some of them are listed here, but as we have seen, we have a long list of capabilities. Now the client is responding for the supported capabilities, which means I want to run some capabilities, maybe EIGRP, maybe USPS, so now you can see the transaction is happening between the client and server model: the client is sending the query and the server is responding.

So first of all, the server is responding that these are my capabilities. What you're looking for, then, is what the client is sending Okay, I'm looking for EIGRP or OSPF, and for that, I can send my operational code, whatever code I have, like get, put, post, delete, et cetera. But in netconf, we have different commands like get, edit, log, unlock, etcetera. And then, finally, you can go and do the configuration. Suppose if you want to do the configuration for any of the interfaces without using any IP operations or IP related commands. You can go into it. So now you're sending the request for the configuration for the operation to the server, and then the server finally sends the response to the client. Okay. And this will be the summary slide we have. So you can think of this as a step 1234 and 5 and how the client server module underlying protocol SSH is doing the capability exchange on the server. They have to do the configuration as per your operational request. You are the client, and it will provide the response. Okay. Alright. So this way, we can go and do the configuration for the network. Let's stop here.

10. Restconf

Next protocol we have Rest conv. Now suppose that if we understand NETCONF and if we know HTTPS, then Rest Conf is a mix of both. Now again, just to review the things, if you go and check what the protocol to call is NETCONF, what's the data model we are going to use as young? Now what's the transport? So transport may be different. In this case, we have HTTP, but we may also have TLS, SSHP, two HTTPs, etc. For the encoding method, we have XML and JSON. If you go and draw the stack, So here at the bottom, you have the saved data model, and then you have transport.

Now this transport might be SSH, maybe HTTP, maybe TLS, and then you have the encoding method. So encoding is nothing but your XML and your JSON. And then we have the protocol. The protocol we are talking about at this point in time is RESTCONF, which is a mixture of HTTP and NET CONF. So here you can see in the diagram that Conf.young plus Https become Rest.Conference. We have a study that is true at this point in time. Now, if you go and compare the risk and net count, then we'll see that the same thing that we are doing with the net count is different, and the same thing we are doing with the rest of the name is different. Some syntax will be different.

Obviously, we have different methods. So here is the list of methods. We have methods that make what we are doing with web browsing very efficient. So we have get, put, patch, delete. Now, get means like the runningshow command in Cisco devices. "Post" means we are creating a new object. Put means you are updating the object; patch means you are making a margin. Delete obviously means deleting the object with respect to object oriented programming. And then we are doing various operations. Now, let me quickly show you the difference. So, I have the difference between the operations of NETCONF and the West Conf. Clearly, you can see that Get is getconfig, Post is edit, the operation is create, and the operations are create, replace, merge, and delete. very similar from line to line. We can understand that both are running in parallel. It depends on which platform is using what type of protocol. So, for example, if I go and take the example of St. Wan, I can go and login to the vanage; that is my management plan.

And then I can open my API dock. Here you can see in the example that Getmethods related to CSR restaurant API configuration are native. So what this API will do is that. I'll show you a quick example related to the Wemanagement API, showing how you can retrieve the data, how you can read that data, how you can run it, and how you can get the output correct. So what method can we go with and build with our restaurants? And so we have the Python tool; we have Postman. We have Firefox rest client; these are the tools we have, but we see that most of the management plans have inbuilt integration with some of the API tools, and from there you can also go and run them with the help of your web browser. So let me quickly go to my view manager web browser, and I'll show you how we can execute certain APIs, alright? So here you can see I have my view managed, and I can go back and do API documents, so I can reach the API inside this API document. I am very interested in building and running one of the APIs related to monitoring related to interface monitoring, so I can go ahead and search for real time monitoring and enterface.

Now you can see that you have the monitoring and if I can check any other real time monitoring interface, I will get the device, and if I scroll down, you can see that the model is schema and you should put the device name or device ID, and then here you have the methods: 200 ms x 400 macros 403 forbidden 500 They are the few quotes Now here I have the query API, so I can use this query data service API and I can paste it here in the web browser, although you can see the response is 200 there, which means that it was successful, and then you can see the headers and you can see the data as well. Let me quickly run here in the web browser, and once I run here, you can see the output.

The nice thing about this is that I can go to the header and then I am looking for certain interfaces and the status of those, so I can go and filter, and if you can see clearly that the interface is gigabit with respect to this device, and that zero one is up, then it is up. Two is up like that, and you can go and filter if you go and check the name, so you have various things like, "This is the DC one, and this is the interface." This is the device IP, but apart from that, you have so much good information if you're looking for RX and TX packets. You can go and check the TX, you can go and check the RX, and likewise OK, so you can see how easy it is to run and get the output, and because we are doing the API call, this is very much to machine interaction. We are executing the API, and then we are getting the result.

Network Device Programmability

1. 27 3.0 Network Device Programmability

Now we reach Section 3, where we have to learn about network device programmability. And this section is actually a big one, where we have to go and do the automation. We have a series of labs where we can understand the use of Net Miko. We are going to use the NC client, and then we are going to do the configuration of iOS 6 and 8 devices. Then I'll show you the nice example in Section 3, where, with the help of Python, we will do and call the Restful API. Restructed API, and we can see the issue of the get lapse related to SDWAN. Then use the ancient to do the configuration of iOS XE, check the subscription model, the public, and then some of the plug and play options. Okay, so this section is going to be good, informative, and a little bit longer. But we are going to get a good amount of information and knowledge in this particular section. That is section three.

2. 28 3.1 Netmiko Intro

After this recording, we have nine videos just to understand the lab related to Net maker. What is Netmico? Net Migo is nothing but a type of library, or it's a program. You can think of it as a programme to do the SSH devices on the multivendor devices, and then we can send the instructions or send the commands as well. Now, in the lab section, you will understand more and more about the Internet, Miguel. Here you can see the list of supported devices. Not only Cisco, but other vendors are also supported with net Miko.

Again, before Net Miko, you may have a number of vendors and devices, and once you apply Net Miko in a proper manner, you can arrange and recognise your infrastructure. It's very easy to install. We can go and use the pipe. In our case, we have pip three, which you will see in the lab section. Pip three instals net MCO, and net MCO will be up and running to get the instructions. Now, I have given her a good amount of references and links from which you can go and learn more and get more knowledge about Net Miko, Python, and the automation tool. Here you can see that if you go to GitHub, you can go and check this particular link, where you will get a good amount of configurations as well.

Again, if you want to host your devices and do the labs over the cloud, that option is also there. You can go and check the labs, which means you can deploy the devices over the lab and do the practice. The best way that I'm using is that you use the GNS, and if you have the proper images, you can play around with the images, like iOS, XC, Steve, or any other type of device on which you want to do the automation, for we are very much restricted or we are very much working with Cisco specific devices. But if you are in a multi-vendor environment, you can go and check the libraries for these operating systems as well. Now here are the operating systems, for example, Palo Alto, Aruba, and Juliet. These are actually very popular, and most of the companies there are also using these devices as well. So while you are doing the automation, you can write the code and the script for these devices as well. As I already told you, we have nine followers after this video. So watch all those videos, and you will get a good amount of working knowledge related to net migration. All right, so let's stop here.

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