2023-Nov-03-R11.1a

Create and Manage Network Intent

Network Intent (NI) describes a network design for a specific network device, what these design baselines are like, and how to verify the design works properly. It provides a way to document network design intent, allowing other engineers to understand the device's design and baseline or normal state of a particular device. NI is supported by the Visual Parser on Configurations, SNMP, CLI commands, API in no-code automation flow.

NI is the cornerstone of the Problem Diagnosis Automation System (PDAS) reference workflow. The following diagram illustrates how intent works in PDAS system:

PDAS-NG has updated no-code intent capture, replication, and execution in many ways, including:
  • On-Demand replication of Intent
  • Major enhancement of Intent’s no-code programmability.
  • Use Intent to drive programable notification to 3rd party solution.
  • Other enhancements such as supporting intent across API-based network such as SDN or Cloud
Enables intent to address five of most complex use cases for network management:
  • Outage Prevention
  • Transient Problems Troubleshooting
  • Application Performance
  • Network Security
  • Protective Change

Main UI of NI

The key components of NI are as follows:

  • Result History: display the data size of the NI result and the total size of the current intent.
  • View on Map: a map embedded in an intent to show the network relationship between devices of this intent.
  • Schedule Intent: schedule an intent directly.
  • Data Source: the data source for running an intent.
  • Device(s): the network device with which this NI is associated.
  • Config, SNMP, and CLI: the device configurations or CLI command outputs for this NI.
  • Variables: the variables decoded by the visual Parser of this NI.
  • Notes, Diagnosis, Status Codes, and Diagnosis Details:
    • Notes: any text describing the design, best practice, and hint.
    • Diagnosis and Status Code: executable codes for home intent and its follow-up intents to verify the design and create an alert if it is violated.
    • Diagnosis Details and Compare Pane: display the statistics of the diagnosis defined in the current command section and you can directly view the diagnosis output and compare the original text output.