For the first time since Covid restrictions were lifted Cisco held its annual Automation Develop Days conference at a live venue in Stockholm. With the upcoming release of Network Service Orchestrator NSO 6.0 and an increased focus on sustainability, it was the ideal time to be there, catch-up with old and new acquaintances and get to grips with the new features on offer. Fredrik Ahlbäck was one of 16 representatives present from Data Ductus.
Cisco Automation Developer Days – live and in person
For the last few years, the Cisco Automation Developer Days have been held remotely, so it was great to finally meet people face to face. We got to mingle with our customers, our partners, and Cisco representatives at the same time.
NSO 6.0 new features
There was obviously a lot of focus on the new features in NSO 6.0, the benefits they can bring, along with tips and tricks for developing within the environment. Features covered included Commit Queues; a new Concurrency Model; a new Kubernetes integration and control functions; more advanced Container Network functions; and improved Availability.
Cisco Crossworks Controller
One of the main topics for discussion was the newly launched Crossworks Controller, a pre-integrated solution for traffic engineering. Interestingly, this new powerful tool for monitoring the health of a system has its own inbuilt NSO. Additionally, as it can be integrated with non-Cisco products, it should prove very useful when monitoring services in order to meet KPIs.
Sustainability and NSO
Sustainability was also high on the agenda. Cisco presented a number of initiatives currently being undertaken including the SUSi framework which focuses on how technology and automation can help to reduce the ecological footprint of networks and solutions. Discussions also revolved around how we, as developers and architects, can find ways to reduce NSO energy requirements through code, commands and design.
NSO wish list
Finally, there were a number of customer cases presented and an open forum for discussion, where Cisco Automation Developer Days attendees were able to discuss their wish lists for upcoming releases. A popular request that centered around this very subject was a more structured way of making feature requests, one in which other users can comment and vote on what they believe should be implemented. Hopefully, we’ll see something like this soon.
All-in-all it was a very informative conference. We will be able to take some of the things learned and use them to better serve our customers. And it was great to meet people face to face again after two years of online meetings.
Fredrik Ahlbäck
Principal Solutions Architect, Data Ductus