NetDevOps: Git and CI/CD for Network Configuration

NetDevOps applies DevOps practices to networking. Git for configurations, CI/CD for deployments, automated testing, and GitOps workflows. Cultural and technical transformation. 2026 NetDevOps guide: tools, sample pipeline, and quick wins.

NetDevOps Principles

• Configuration as code: everything in Git
• CI/CD: automated lint, test, and deployment pipeline
• Testing: pre-deployment validation (Batfish)
• GitOps: the Git repository is the source of truth
• Collaboration: PR reviews and pair programming
• Continuous improvement

Typical Tool Stack

• Git: GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket
• CI/CD: GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
• Source of Truth: NetBox, Nautobot, Infoblox
• Automation: Ansible, Nornir, Terraform
• Testing: Batfish, SuzieQ, pytest
• Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana

Sample Pipeline

• 1. The engineer creates a feature branch
• 2. Updates the source-of-truth YAML configuration
• 3. Pushes the changes and opens a Pull Request
• 4. CI: YAML linting + Ansible syntax checks + Batfish
• 5. Peer review
• 6. Merge → automatic deployment to staging
• 7. Post-deployment tests (ping, BGP status)
• 8. Manual approval → deployment to production
• 9. Continuous monitoring

Batfish

• Network configuration simulation before deployment
• Detects routing loops, ACL conflicts, and reachability issues
• Open source
• CI integration: pybatfish

Quick Wins

• Back up configurations in Git (30 min setup)
• YAML linting (1h)
• Ansible Vault for secrets (2h)
• Staging VM lab (1d)
• Basic CI pipeline (3d)

Cultural Transformation

• NetOps ≠ NetDevOps: a mindset shift is required
• Python, Git, and YAML training
• Peer review
• Blameless post-mortems
• Living documentation

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