Networking Field Day: Networking as code

Networking practices and tech lags behind other areas in many IT orgs. Learn how applying infrastructure as code processes and tools to network automation and management can modernize your IT environments.

HashiCorp Developer Advocate, Rosemary Wang, and Product Marketing Manager, Melar Chen, present HashiCorp’s infrastructure as code philosophy and how to apply it to networking through a series of presentations and demos. 

Here are the four sessions from HashiCorp that aired during networking field day:

First, Melar Chen kicked off the series with a look at the state of infrastructure at typical enterprises, and how many are centralizing their infrastructure practices with HashiCorp Terraform and a platform team.

Next, Rosemary Wang gives a demo-driven overview of Terraform and its best practices, all while answering panel questions and providing examples of how networking automation relates to each practice. The three main practices of the talk include:

Declarative infrastructure code

Define what resources should be.

Maintaining code and state

Use as a source of truth.

Inject dependencies

Decouple resources to mitigate impact.

A second demo-driven overview of Terraform focuses on testing, modules, and policy as code checks, and how those are all leveraged for automating, testing, and templatizing network infrastructure.

Modularize

Offer self-service for resources.

Test

Validate that the system functions as intended.

Verify

Check for secure and compliant configurations and settings.

Finally, learn patterns and practices to help maintain and scale networking as code over time. By using Terraform Cloud, Rosemary shows how to reduce configuration drift with drift detection to minimize automation failures and treat the network as immutable infrastructure using a blue-green deployment model to implement major changes.