Forward Networks’ Craig Johnson (aka @captainpacket) joined this panel at the Network Automation Forum. Key topics discussed on observability with network automation include:

• Observability is the fuel for automation. To achieve real closed-loop automation, you need to be able to see what’s going on with your actions.
• Observability is complicated, domain-specific, messy, and constantly changing. It’s vital to efficient human-based network management, let alone automated network management.
• The endgame for all of this is the automated self-healing network. 
• Observability is all about understanding at a granular level what’s happening inside of your infrastructure and being aware of domains of blindness that you aren’t even aware you’re blind to.

Moderator:

Richard Piasentin, Accedian is now part of Cisco

Speakers:

• Craig Johnson, Forward Networks
• Josh Stephens, BackBox
• Justin Ryburn, Kentik