Network Automation - Setting up Cloud Assembly to deploy on demand networks.  

We start by launching Cloud Assembly from the Cloud Services Portal into Deployments.  Three existing deployments are displayed.  The deployed resources show compute and networking objects, including the IP address of the virtual machines.  Let's look at how to set Cloud Assembly up for Network Automation.

Navigate to Infrastructure -> Network Profiles -> Network -> Management - Switch

Here we can see details of the switch including the CIDR, gateway, and network domain.  Note: CIDR value is required if the switch is used for external access.

Moving to network policies.  Network types in the blueprint correspond to these radio buttons in Network Policies.  Selecting Create an on-demand network creates new network objects in NSX.  First we need to choose the transport zone, then add the private network CIDR and subnets we'll use for on-demand networks.  The other two options are used primarily with existing and private networks.  

Next we will add an External network, usually we match the External network with the logical switch we chose in Networks.  External network is not required for all network types, notably Private.  Then we choose a T-0 Gateway and Edge Cluster from the NSX install.

Moving to blueprints, we choose Single-VM-NAT.  Then our network and compute objects are visible on the canvas.  The right portion of the blueprint shows how yaml is used for example, to determine the object placement and configuration, plus user input options when deploy is selected.  

Cloud Assembly clones the vSphere template (image) called for in the blueprint.  Switching to the vSphere Web Client, we can see the machine is provisioned and booting up.  Let's look at NSX to see what was created there.  

We can also adds tags to objects created in NSX during a deployment.  In this case we tagged new logical switches that are associated with our NGINX web servers that have been deployed.  Clicking a provisioned switch takes you to detail of the switch, including ports, DHCP server/pool, T-1 gateway, NAT rules, all of which were setup by Cloud Assembly.  

Our new VM is booted and has an IP assigned by the DHCP server in NSX.  Moving back to Cloud Assembly, we can view Networks that have been discovered and deployed.  Discovered networks are created outside Cloud Assembly and available for consumption.  Deployed networks are created by Cloud Assembly and also available for consumption.  We can filter on different properties, in this case Tags: nginx, where we can also view tagged objects.