Cisco restructured their entire certification program on February 24, 2020. This included the CCNP. Modern networks demand that the new certification paths be updated. One of the major changes was a greater emphasis on network automation, programmability. This means that network engineers will face new challenges and technologies.
We’ll be taking a closer look at CCNP and protocols related network programmability such as YANG, NETCONF and RESTCONF.
The New CCNP, Automation and Network Programmability
With the new Cisco certification paths, you’ll need to pass two exams to become CCNP Enterprise-certified. You will need to pass the 350-401 ENCOR core exam and an additional concentration exam.
Before we examine the concentrations, it is clear that Cisco is focusing its efforts on programming and validating automation skills. According to the topic list, automation is represented at 15% of the ENCOR exam. Different subtopics include Python, YANG and RESTCONF.NETCONF. JSON. As well as tools like Ansible, Chef, and NETCONF. To pass the CCNP exams, you will need to have a solid understanding of Python and automation.
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Start trainingIf automation and programmability are your interests, there is a CCNP concentration. The 300-435 ENAUTO concentration focuses on enterprise-automated solution like Python programming, APIs and automation tools. Network device programming is the only topic that makes up 20% of the 300-435 ENAUTO exam topics.
The new CCNP Enterprise is a large part of automation and programmability.
Are you interested in studying for CCNP Enterprise Core certification? Take a look at our Cisco CCNP Enterprise Core (350–401 ENCOR).
Data structures: YANG, YAML, JSON, and XML
Automating and programming networks is all about getting computers to do our jobs. Data must be provided in a format that computers are able to read. This is where YANG and YAML, JSON and XML enter the network programmability picture. Let’s take a look at each one before we move onto the configuration protocols.
XML
XML, or Extensible Markup language, is a common way to format data. It was designed, as the name suggests, to be extensible and universal enough to be used with a wide range of applications. XML uses custom tags for defining elements. An example of an XML file might look like this:
012345678 movie movieID=”1’’> Joe Actor Learning Comedy. An aspiring sysadmin’s journey to certification. Simply by looking at the format, it is clear why it is so easy for humans and machines to understand. The > characters allow you to open a section or close it. Plaintext that is human-readable helps us humans. XML is a common way of encoding data for APIs. IT pros who are interested in mastering automation can use it to their advantage.
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation (or JSON) is another popular method to encode API data. Many times, the JSON format will be used to return the response from a RESTful API via HTTP(S). JSON can be used with many languages and applications today, even though JavaScript is the name of the API. The formatting is different than XML, but it is still easily readable by humans, as you can see in the example below.
012345678910 “movies”: “movie”: “Lead” :”Joe Actor”, title:”Learning to Learn”, “genre:”Comedy”, and “desc” :”An aspiring sysadmins journey towards certhood”, “_filmID:”1’’
YAML
YAML was once an acronym for Yet Another Markup Language.