Network automation is basically the use of IT controls to carry out and supervise the everyday network management functions. It could range from device discovery, network mapping to provisioning of virtual network and network configuration management. But why exactly you need network automation? Let’s take a look at the reasons that demands it:
1.Human Error
One of the most important and major reason for automating your network is the human errors. About 40% of network failures are the result of human errors. So, updating the configurations shouldn’t be done manually. As, automation has proven to decrease the errors, you need to automate mechanisms where you need to implement a change control process or verifying a proposed change.
2.Network Analysis
When all the data is collected about a network and performance analysis in order to identify any current or potential problems, it is called network analysis. Usually the network engineers don’t have the time to perform this analysis in spite of knowing how important it is. By automating the task of analysis you make the identification of various problems an easy process.
3.Financial Factor
By paying only for those devices that are on your network and tracking the inventory of your network devices, you can efficiently reduce your operating costs. Also, by tracking the age of all of your devices and the OS loaded in them, you can get an idea of the devices that you want to upgrade next in the network.
4.Scaling of Processes
In order to run your networks smoothly and with least amount of downtime, you need to perform a number of processes on a continuous basis. But performing these tasks manually take a lot of time, hence are rarely performed. Through network automation, you can perform these tasks regularly without running the risk of network failure. These processes basically consist of compliance to the network policies, saving configuration on a backup server, identifying any unused switch ports along with improving the network resilience and mixing the various OS versions to encounter any unexpected bugs.
5.Performance
One of the primary task of network management is performance monitoring that is close to impossible without automation, especially in a network that consists of about 50 or more routers and switches.
Networks are not easy, they are actually big and increasingly complex. Through automation only you can provide high availability while managing the complexity and size of it.