[Infrastructures] using IA methodologies to build network element configuration

[Brent Chapman]

At 2:56 PM +0100 4/3/05, Matt S Trout wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 02:55:34PM -0500, Daniel Hagerty wrote:
>>      The routing policy is by far from the only example (like the
>>  firewalls you're avoiding), but it all comes down to the same problems
>>  in the end:
>>
>>      You have a large, distributed system.  Each part of it has to be
>>  consistent with the the whole for the distributed system to perform
>>  correctly.  Whether the distributed system consists primarily of unix
>>  machines,  or routers is of little consequence -- distributed system
>>  is distributed system.
>>
>>      If the world was perfect, you could write down a language that
>>  described your entire distributed system, and produce all the other
>>  configuration aspects of it from this one uber language.  In practice,
>>  there's some getting there from here to achieve this.  People are able
>>  to do it now to more or lesser extents, but we're still producing
>>  these languages in an ad hoc fashion.
>
>This is why I'm attempting to build an XML-driven transformation engine
>that can be used to build up a common library of transforms for various
>types of devices. It's called BAST, and is still at a very early stage,
>but it anybody wants to have a look at it, there's a tarball at
>http://trout.me.uk/perl/ - have a look in the 'data/network/' directory
>for some proof-of-concept work generating configurations for switches.

Yes, this looks like the sort of template-driven config-generator 
that I was talking about in my previous message.  Great start!  Where 
are you planning on going with it?  Any idea about timeline and 
eventual availability?


-Brent
-- 
Brent Chapman <brent@greatcircle.com> -- Great Circle Associates, Inc.
Specializing in network infrastructure for Silicon Valley since 1989
For info about us and our services, please see http://www.greatcircle.com/
Network Automation blog: http://www.greatcircle.com/blog/network_automation