After years of maintaining heavily customized vendor tools—and more than 60 supporting servers—Intel reached another inflection point. The cost and technical debt were no longer sustainable.
The team began searching for an off-the-shelf platform built around open standards and centralized management. They ultimately selected the open-source version of Nautobot, created and maintained by Network to Code, to serve as a network source of truth and automation foundation. Migration required scripting and cleanup to transform existing device data into usable, structured network data—but it laid the groundwork for a more disciplined model.
A network source of truth is a centrally located, authoritative repository of operations data that’s been validated and consolidated. It can document network intent and provide programmatic access to data for network automation tools and other systems, according to Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).
“Network automation tools need to reference an authoritative set of network data to make sure that the changes they make reflect what you want the network to look like and do,” said Shamus McGillicuddy, research director for the network management practice at EMA, during a recent webinar.
For Intel, the philosophical shift was as important as the platform choice. “Start with your network data,” Botts says. “Everything else should be a byproduct of the data.”
Instead of updating documentation after changes were made, Intel reversed the process. All changes now begin in the source of truth and are pushed to the network via automation. CLI-driven copy-and-paste workflows are no longer part of normal operations.
