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Hank Preston

Distinguished Architect

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Hank started his career in network engineering like many, by cracking open a CCNA book and learning all about subnetting, the OSI model, and CLI interfaces. He fell in love with the deceptive simplicity and elegance of network communication and TCP/IP and dove in head first. His journey was one that included many network designs (and debates about designs), miles of copper/fiber cables, late night change windows, and even later night troubleshooting calls (it’s always the network… even when it isn’t :-). Along the way he picked up certifications in routing/switching, wireless, and security, culminating with earning CCIE #38336 in February 2013 and later becoming the first Cisco DevNet Expert #20220001. After spending a couple of years exploring the world of “Cloud”, “DevOps” and “Applications”, the talk of SDN, automation and programmability caught his ears, and he decided it was past time to return to networking full time. Hank's day job is putting NetDevOps theory into practice as the Principal Engineer for Learning and Certifications at Cisco. Helping engineer and operate the platform used by engineers around the world to learn the skills to be better engineers when they operate their own platforms. It's kinda circular and meta.

Articles

December 13, 2017

DEVELOPER

Automating Cisco ACI with Ansible Eliminates Repetitive Day-to-Day Tasks

5 min read

Jacob McGill is a network automation engineer at Network to Code, a network automation solutions provider that provides network automation training and professional services. He spends his time helping customers automate their networks using tools including like Python and Ansible. Jacob is also an Ansible developer who's written and contributed to many of the ACI modules that were released in 2.4. Feel free to reach out to Jacob at jacob@networktocode.com

December 13, 2017

DEVELOPER

With POAP You’ll Never Console into your Nexus Switches Again

3 min read

Ajay Chenempara is a senior network automation engineer at Network to Code, a network automation solutions provider that provides network automation training and professional services. Ajay is the lead instructor at Network to Code while also assisting with automation related projects. He's usually in front of customers helping them learn different tools, APIs, and technologies ranging from Python and Ansible to more complex CI/CD pipelines and how they can be leveraged within the context of network automation. Ajay can be reached at ajay@networktocode.com.

October 11, 2017

DEVELOPER

Part 2: NetDevOps Goes Beyond Infrastructure as Code

5 min read

In NetDevOps, it is standard to have a "Continuous Development" approach to network changes.  Proposed network changes are picked up by build servers which manage the progression from "Development" to "Test" and into "Production".  NetDevOps will mirror what is becoming commonplace in software development teams.

October 9, 2017

DEVELOPER

Part 1: Embrace NetDevOps, Say Goodbye to a “Culture of Fear”

4 min read

Network Builders focus on the care and feeding of the network, making sure it's available for the "consumers". The Network Consumers are the users of the network, and expect to treat the network like a utility - it "should just work".

August 9, 2017

DEVELOPER

Using CLI as Training Wheels with NETCONF/YANG

6 min read

Get all the details behind what we announced at Cisco Live! "Introducing an entirely new era of networking." Here's how you can get started, with Cisco DevNet.

June 12, 2017

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL

DevNet Uncensored @Cisco Live! What happens in Vegas Goes on #CiscoChat

2 min read

DevNet Zone Cisco Live US 2017 is nearly here, and we have planned SO much for the DevNet community. Even for those unable to make it to Las Vegas.