Network Automation with Go

Understand the world of modern network automation with Go and deepen your knowledge with insights from 10+ experts who have real-world hands-on experience with network automation and/or are using Go for network-related tasks

Key Features

• A comprehensive guide to the world of modern network automation
• Use Go to build anything from repetitive task automation to complex distributed systems
• Over 30 practical, ready-to-use sample programs

Book Description

Go's built-in first-class concurrency mechanisms make it an ideal choice for long-lived low-bandwidth I/O operations, which are typical requirements of network automation and network operations applications.

This book provides a quick overview of Go and hands-on examples within it to help you become proficient with Go for network automation. It's a practical guide that will teach you how to automate common network operations and build systems using Go.

The first part takes you through a general overview, use cases, strengths, and inherent weaknesses of Go to prepare you for a deeper dive into network automation, which is heavily reliant on understanding this programming language. You'll explore the common network automation areas and challenges, what language features you can use in each of those areas, and the common software tools and packages. To help deepen your understanding, you'll also work through real-world network automation problems and apply hands-on solutions to them.

By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with Go and have a solid grasp on network automation.

What you will learn

• Understand Go programming language basics via network-related examples
• Find out what features make Go a powerful alternative for network automation
• Explore network automation goals, benefits, and common use cases
• Discover how to interact with network devices using a variety of technologies
• Integrate Go programs into an automation framework
• Take advantage of the OpenConfig ecosystem with Go
• Build distributed and scalable systems for network observability

Who this book is for

This book is for all network engineers, administrators, and other network practitioners looking to understand what network automation is and how the Go programming language can help develop network automation solutions. As the first part of the book offers a comprehensive overview of Go's main features, this book is suitable for beginners with a solid grasp on programming basics.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Go Basics
3. Getting Started with Go
4. Networking (TCP/IP) with Go
5. Network Automation
6. Configuration Management
7. Automation Frameworks
8. Network APIs
9. OpenConfig
10. Network Monitoring
11. Expert Insights
12. Appendix: Building a Testing Environment