[My Journey to CCIE Automation – Week 3] Orchestration API + NETCONF

My journey continues

👋 Hi, I’m Bjørnar Lintvedt

I’m a Senior Network Consultant at Bluetree, working at the intersection of networking and software development.

As mentioned in my first blog post, I’m preparing for the CCIE Automation lab exam — Cisco’s most advanced certification for network automation and programmability. I’m documenting the journey here with weekly, hands-on blog posts tied to the blueprint.

Link to my GitLab Repo

Week 3

This week has been all about getting deeper into NETCONF and YANG – two cornerstones of modern network automation.

NETCONF and ncclient

NETCONF is a protocol that lets you communicate with network devices over XML. Instead of pushing raw CLI commands, you send structured data in XML.

• It establishes a NETCONF session to the device
• Lets you perform operations like get, get-config, edit-config
• Uses XML payloads to push or retrieve configuration/state

YANG 
YANG is the data modeling language that defines what kind of data you can send with NETCONF.

• It describes device configuration and state in a structured way.
• I familarized my self with Cisco Yang Suite, which is a tool that make it a bit easier to understand how Yang works.
• To access specific parts of the model, you often use XPath queries. Think of it as a GPS coordinate inside the XML tree – so instead of digging through thousands of lines of config, you can just ask:
  👉 “Give me the interface description for GigabitEthernet0/0/0”

Orchestration Service + Automation script 

Armed with this knowledge, I built a new Nautix service: Orchestration

🔹 Orchestration Service

• A Flask app serving an Orchestration API. 
• API endpoints to create and list jobs
• Jobs are stored in a database and immediately trigger a NETCONF operation with ncclient
  

This means I can now go from“devices in inventory” → to “execute NETCONF action” in one flow. Which brings me to a new automation script.

🔸 Run netconf job on all devices in inventory 

• A python Click tool that

  • Takes XML path, NETCONF operation method, username, and password as parameters

  • Fetches all devices from the Inventory API
  • Creates jobs in the Orchestration API
  • Which pushes XML configs or retrieves data
  • Displays the results

Look into my GitLab repository for more details — I’ve tried to comment the code as best as I can.

Service Interactions update

Since a new service is added, the Nautix diagram has also been updated:

Reflections from the Week

• NETCONF and YANG were abstract at first, but working hands-on with ncclient and YANG Suite helped a lot.

• There is for sure a lot of improvements to be made. But I have limited time, so it's best effort :)

📅 What’s Next

Blueprint item 2.7 Create and use a role by utilizing Ansible to manage infrastructure, given support documentation

    2.7.a Loop control
    2.7.b Conditionals
    2.7.c Use of variables and templating
    2.7.d Use of connection plug-ins such as network CLI, HTTPAPI, and NETCONF

🔗 Useful Links

• GitLab Repo – My CCIE Automation Code
• ncclient documentation
• YANG documentation

Blog series

• [Week 1] Intro + Building a Python CLI app
• [Week 2] Building a Inventory REST API + Docker
• [Week 3] Orchestration API + NETCONF
• [Week 4] Automating Network Discovery and Reports with Python & Ansible
• [Week 5] Building Network Pipelines for Reliable Changes with pyATS & GitLab CI