Say goodbye to manual inspections, automation makes network device management more efficient

In modern network architecture, the health of network equipment is directly related to the stability and performance of the entire system. In order to ensure that network equipment can continue to operate efficiently, traditional manual inspection methods often face problems such as heavy workload, low efficiency, and easy errors. Therefore, automated inspection of network equipment has become an important means to improve network operation and maintenance efficiency.

The necessity of automated inspection

• Efficiency: Manual inspection is time-consuming and labor-intensive, while automated inspection can quickly complete a large number of tasks and significantly improve efficiency.
• Reduce human errors: Manual inspections are prone to errors, while automated systems follow rules to reduce errors.
• Data traceability: Automated inspection results will be recorded and saved to provide data support for troubleshooting and performance optimization.
• Timely detection of potential problems: The automation system can check the status of equipment in real time or regularly, detect abnormalities in advance, and reduce downtime.

Core technologies for automated inspection

(1) Netmiko

Netmiko is a Python library designed for network devices to facilitate operations such as configuration adjustment and command execution. The library is widely compatible with network devices and protocols from multiple manufacturers, greatly facilitating engineers to use Python scripts for automated inspection and configuration management.

(2) TextFSM

TextFSM is a Python library that is specifically designed to extract information from structured text (especially the output of network devices). It uses templates to match and parse data and convert the results into an easy-to-process format (such as a dictionary or list). This makes it easy to automatically extract key information from CLI outputs such as routing tables and interface status, making it easier for network operators and developers to perform further analysis.

Basic Usage

(1) Install Netmiko

First you need to install Netmiko. You can install it using pip:

 pip install netmiko

(2) Basic connections

When using Netmiko to connect to a network device, you need to specify the device's IP address, device type, username, password, etc. Netmiko supports multiple device types (such as Cisco, Huawei, Juniper, etc.), which correspond to different commands and interaction methods.

 from netmiko import ConnectHandler # 定义设备连接信息device = { 'device_type': 'huawei', # 设备类型，例如'cisco_ios'、'huawei' 等'host': '192.168.56.10', # 设备的IP 地址'username': 'user01', # 登录用户名'password': 'user01', # 登录密码'secret': 'secret', # (可选) 如果需要启用特权模式，可以提供secret } # 建立连接net_connect = ConnectHandler(**device) # 进入特权模式（如果需要） # net_connect.enable() # 执行命令并获取输出output = net_connect.send_command('display version') # 打印命令输出print(output) # 断开连接net_connect.disconnect()

(3) Command output formatting

Netmiko supports formatting command output in different ways. For example, you can use send_command with the use_textfsm=True parameter to parse the output as structured data (requires a TextFSM template to be pre-configured).

 # 执行命令并获取输出output = net_connect.send_command('display version',use_textfsm=True,\ textfsm_template='./templates/huawei/huawei_version.textfsm')

After executing the above test script, the following results are returned after successful operation:

 $ python test.py [{'version': '5.110', 'device_model': 'S5700-28C-HI', 'uptime': '0 week, 0 day, 2 hours, 46 minutes'}]

Package script tool

This script uses Netmiko and TextFSM to help us perform device inspections. The following is a diagram of the script directory structure:

• The templates directory stores TextFSM parsing templates.
• config.toml is the configuration file of the project
• The devices.xlsx file stores inspection devices and inspection commands. The format is shown in the following figure:

Inspection equipment ledger

Inspection Command

Using this script is very simple. First, adjust the contents of the devices.xlsx file to your specific situation, then run main.py.

This script currently implements basic functions and provides a good starting point for everyone. We strongly encourage students with ideas to further develop and expand more practical functions according to their own business needs!