...because copy+paste isn't a network configuration strategy - automation for amateurs#

James Morgan - VERNet (presented with Mitch Blair, VERNet, per the slides)

• Why: A 15-person research network replaced CLI copy-paste and spreadsheet IPAM with NetBox-as-source-of-truth and full configuration generation — a complete, honest, adoptable automation pattern touching IPAM, a core PM interest.
• What: VERNet's journey from 2019 ("configs lived on devices, IPAM was a classy spreadsheet, everyone gets read/write") to today: NetBox holds IPAM, L2/L3 hardware inventory, OOB, racks, and config metadata; ConnectMaster holds fiber plant; the OSS holds customer/service records. Golden configs were rebuilt from first principles (a box with no services, plus role-dictated sections); services were classified and their differences turned into properties; Jinja templates (in Git, synced to NetBox) render full device configs. The pipeline: device state change in NetBox → generated candidate config → diffed against the approved repo → pull request → on approval, AWX/Ansible pushes a full overwrite with on-box validation, automatic rollback on failed checks, and commit-confirm; scheduled AWX jobs track drift (running vs approved config) and open GitHub issues on divergence. Refreshingly honest about pain: the first generated config errors out, the second is six lines, "by about the 12^th generation you'll get a full config," and the diffing phase surfaced hundreds of edge cases and embarrassing legacy mistakes nobody owned.
• How: NetBox + Git + GitHub Actions + AWX + Ansible; config templates inherit; review shifts from config diffs to template diffs; fewer people need write access; provisioning a new box takes minutes.
• Where applicable: Small and mid-size networks of any vendor mix. Explicitly framed as "if we can do this, you absolutely can" — though they candidly note they haven't yet decided whether their particular sync approach works for them. Adopt the pattern, not their exact choices.