Building an Automation Workflow

This final lesson brings together everything you have learned into a practical, end-to-end network automation workflow. We will design a complete system for managing network configuration changes — from planning and development through testing, deployment, and validation.

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The End-to-End Workflow

┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐
│  Plan    │──>│  Develop │──>│  Test    │──>│  Deploy  │──>│ Validate │
│          │   │          │   │          │   │          │   │          │
│ - Ticket │   │ - Data   │   │ - Lint   │   │ - Ansible│   │ - pyATS  │
│ - Design │   │ - Template│  │ - pytest │   │ - Nornir │   │ - Diff   │
│ - Review │   │ - Git    │   │ - Batfish│   │ - NAPALM │   │ - Alerts │
└──────────┘   └──────────┘   └──────────┘   └──────────┘   └──────────┘

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Step 1: Plan

Every automation workflow starts with understanding what needs to change and why: