About

Josh VanDeraa

I’m a veteran Network Engineer who has finally caught on how to put together CS teachings with a Networking degree. Working on doing almost all things via automation.

Self re-taught network/automation engineer. I’ve primarily been digging around within Ansible and Python. I’ve been doing Python networking since 2015 when a speaker came in and talked about how he had put together a NOC for a conference heavily leveraging automation capabilities via Python. Since then I have been going deep down the rabbit hole that is Network Automation.

In 2020 Cisco released the Cisco DevNet certification program. I am one of the first 500 individuals to achieve a Cisco DevNet certification, with passing first the DevNet Associate exam. Later I followed up that certification with the DevNet Professional certification as well.

DevNet Professional DevNet 500 DevNet Associate DevNet Class of 2020

My Work

Book

During the pandemic, I thought what better way to get started than with writing a book about getting started with open source network tools. Get it on LeanPub

Speaking Engagements

In 2022 I had the opportunity to complete my first NANOG talk, on automating circuit maintenance notifications. This section will outline my continued source of talks:

NANOG86 - Automating Circuit Maintenance Notifications

Podcasts

Packet Pushers - Ansible or Terraform
Network Automation Nerds - Interview Part 1
Network Automation Nerds - Interview Part 2

Ansible Content

Network Automation Course (Packet Pushers): Ignition page.
Minneapolis Ansible Meetup April 2020 Talk
- First half using NetBox with the NetBox Ansible Collections
- Second half on creating your own custom filters
Ansible Guest Blog Post - Using NetBox as Ansible Source of Truth
Minneapolis Ansible Meetup January 2021 - Ansible Records