CCNP ENCOR 350-401: Automation, SDN & Wireless (5/5)

Explore the challenges of traditional network management, including growing staff needs, multiple operating systems, and vendor diversity, and see how automation addresses repetitive configuration and troubleshooting tasks.

Explore network automation goals, automating daily tasks, device provisioning, and configuration deployments to reduce manual effort, standardize procedures, and speed troubleshooting with AI-assisted insights.

Identify the types of network automation across lan, data center, cloud, and wireless networks, including dynamic device provisioning, policy automation, and software defined networking and access.

Automate plug-and-play initial provisioning of new devices via a centralized gateway and automation software, then apply dynamic qos and security policies based on traffic and applications.

Automate software deployments and network tasks from a centralized location, including topology visualization, documentation updates, automated troubleshooting, and AI-assisted diagnostics.

Explore how network automation reduces operational cost, speeds device deployment, lowers human errors, and ensures centralized control with stable, consistent configurations across scalable networks.

Identify automation origination points from unbox automation management and embedded event manager to server-based solutions like Ansible Tower, and learn how Ezzedine controllers centralize SDN to shape traffic and policies.

Explore software defined networking (SDN) and the central controller's role in automating forwarding, policies, and dynamic quality of service without touching individual devices.

Sdn controllers act as the brain of the network, driving forwarding decisions. They centralize policy management for security and QoS via a console, with physical appliances, software, or cloud deployments.

Compare traditional networks with SDN controllers, highlighting automated provisioning, centralized control, and policy-driven updates that reduce manual device handling and enable a single pane of glass management.

Identify how network devices divide functionalities into planes, focusing on the control and management planes, and explore how SDM shapes their operation for network design.

Explore how the data plane performs forwarding by using routing tables, interfaces, encapsulation from layer two to three, trunk tagging, and traffic filtering, with VPN/IP considerations.

The control plane builds a routing and neighbor database via protocols to guide the forwarding plane in choosing the correct interface for packets, including routing, multicast, and IPv6.

Explore the management plane and management plan, including configuring devices, monitoring interfaces and routing tables, troubleshooting, collecting statistics with netflow, enabling time synchronization, and generating logs.

Explore how the SDN management plane uses a centralized controller (like Cisco DNA) to automate configuration, schedule commands, and monitor devices with Netcom (XML-based) and Young models.

Understand how the control plane moves to the controller, which programs forwarding decisions and maintains a database for routing, while networking devices only forward under centralized control.

Explore the imperative and declarative SDN models, where the controller programs the data plane and governs routing, with OpenFlow as an example and considerations for controller availability.

Discover the declarative SDN model where devices retain control and forwarding capabilities. The controller learns application requirements and instructs devices to adjust routing and quality of service policy accordingly.

Design sdn networks by selecting interoperable controllers and hardware, building clusters for high availability, and ensuring redundant paths and secure access. Prepare training to enable automated provisioning and policy enforcement.

Explore underlay versus overlay fabrics and how separating the control plane on the Ezzedine controller enables the data plane to forward traffic across an IP-enabled, L3 underlay with routing protocols.

Explore how overlay networks create virtual networks atop underlying networks, with a controller programming forwarding paths and quality of service policies to meet application requirements.

Explore the sdn fabric as the physical infrastructure, where devices are controlled by a central controller and share protocols to enable redundancy and load balancing across multiple paths.

Understand how an API acts as a messenger that lets two applications talk, including northbound and southbound APIs, with examples from hotel, weather, login, payments, and airline databases.

Explore two API types: intra-system APIs that operate within a single computer, and between-application APIs that require network connectivity to connect apps across systems.

Explore how applications talk to the controller via northbound APIs in sdn networks to request network information and push configurations, while the controller commands devices to apply policies.

Northbound APIs let applications request device information, topology, and interface status from SDN controllers, using SOAP or REST web services with REST offering lower bandwidth.

Understand how a controller uses southbound APIs to direct forwarding and device configuration. Explore open flow, Open Networking Foundation, Netcom protocol, and REST API approaches for controller-to-device communication.

Explore Cisco DevNet, a developer program that provides APIs, software development kits, and learning tracks to help developers and IT professionals build, integrate, and automate applications with Cisco platforms.

This lecture explains how Cisco DevNet certifications validate software and automation skills across tracks like enterprise, security, and data center, with associate and specialist paths, and no expert level yet.

Access on-demand Cisco sandboxes for test and development with real devices, APIs, and DNA automation. Explore data center automation, cloud, and security tools with training videos, documentation, blogs, and forums.

Explore Cisco DevNet sandbox labs across networking, open source, and data center automation, compare always-on versus reservation sandboxes, log in with multiple options, and access via VPN.

Learn how to reserve and access sandbox labs using DNA Center, navigate the predefined topology, and log in with shared credentials to run Cisco lab sessions.

Learn Cisco DNA Center, a centralized appliance that provides a single pane of glass to map networks, discover devices, push templates, and troubleshoot from a graphical interface.

Explore Cisco DNA Center appliance options, from standalone to cluster mode, with up to three appliances for high availability, and form factors to fit network size and access points.

Discover how DNA Center discovers devices, builds the inventory, and manages device images and golden images across sites.

Explore how DNA Center designs and provisions global networks, imports existing infrastructures, runs device diagnostics, creates and deploys templates, applies policies, and provides assurance and troubleshooting with telemetry.

Discover how lip service web APIs enable web-based requests between controllers and networking devices, using URIs and URLs to query status and configurations.

Explore the most common web service APIs, including SOAP and REST, and how XML-encoded data enables communication and configuration between applications and network devices.

Learn the REST API as a web-based architectural style that defines resources and standard requests (get, post, put, delete, options) for communication between applications, controllers, and devices.

Explore network automation tools for configuration management, including master-agent push and pull models, with popular software like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack; compare controller versus independent deployments.

Automation tools simplify config management by pushing script-driven changes to multiple devices, enabling scheduled or manual deployments and centralized control via a controller.

Explore the common similarities among configuration management tools, including yaml, Ruby, and Python scripting, preconfigured templates, and script-driven config files that automate tasks without manual command line work.

Understand how a configuration management master controls agents to push or pull configurations, with agent-based and agentless options across tools like Puppet, Chef, Salt, and Ansible.

Compare agent-based and agentless configuration management tools, where the master deploys configurations to nodes. Use proxy agents for devices without agents, and consider examples like Ansible and Puppet Bolt.

Explain push and pull configuration management: push delivers changes from a master to devices for immediate updates, while pull uses agents on nodes to fetch changes on intervals.

Learn how configuration files drive automation by defining changes on a master server, using templates from tools like Ansible or Puppet, and pushing updates to network devices.