GitOps Workflow for Network Automation

Overview

GitOps applies infrastructure-as-code principles to network configuration:

  • Git as single source of truth

  • Pull requests for change review

  • Automated deployment on merge

  • Rollback via git revert

Workflow

Developer          Git Repo           CI/CD            Network
    │                  │                │                 │
    │── Edit .j2 ─────▶│                │                 │
    │                  │                │                 │
    │── git push ─────▶│                │                 │
    │                  │── PR Created ─▶│                 │
    │                  │                │── Lint/Test ───▶│
    │                  │                │                 │
    │◀── Review ───────│                │                 │
    │                  │                │                 │
    │── Approve ──────▶│── Merge ──────▶│                 │
    │                  │                │── Deploy ──────▶│
    │                  │                │── Verify ──────▶│
    │                  │                │                 │

Implementation

Repository Structure

network-configs/
├── inventory/
│   ├── hosts.yaml
│   └── group_vars/
├── templates/
│   ├── access-switch.j2
│   └── core-switch.j2
├── generated/          # gitignored, CI output
├── .github/
│   └── workflows/
│       └── deploy.yaml
└── nornir.yaml

CI Pipeline (GitHub Actions)

name: Network Config Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Lint Jinja2
        run: j2lint templates/

  diff:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Generate configs
        run: nornir run --task generate
      - name: Show diff
        run: nornir run --task diff_config

  deploy:
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    needs: [lint, diff]
    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
      - name: Deploy configs
        run: nornir run --task deploy_config

Rollback

# Revert last commit
git revert HEAD --no-edit
git push

# CI automatically deploys previous config

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