The not-so-hidden ✨ team behind #SRLinux (1)
I’ve been hesitant to start this series about the people behind #SRLinux. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that some company came in and swooped them up. Finding and keeping great teammates is hard enough without the dynamics of external competition — but at the same time, these people deserve our attention. Because no matter how great the product, for our Nokia networking software it is really these people who not just create — they ARE our secret sauce 🧪.
And Roman isn’t the kind of person who would blog about himself. I’m not really sure, perhaps he’s just too busy coding up some tool or other, or maybe it’s his character. Either way, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of the things he’s been working on, to try and provide a glimmer of a glimpse into what’s coming next.
Containerlab 🧪: Virtual multi-vendor networking in seconds
I should start by pointing out that the “Wim” in https://github.com/srl-wim/container-lab is Wim Henderickx, another great not-so-hidden guy in our global team. It’s not that either one of them couldn’t do it all by themselves — they probably could — but they seem to prefer to collaborate.
At this point in time (March 2021) I would recommend to follow Roman and watch this project closely. I don’t mean to spoil any surprises — note I’m not even saying there will be any— and you may notice that some things aren’t quite there yet. But…
☲ gNMI CLI Client ☲
Karim Radhouani (‘karimra’ in https://github.com/karimra/gnmic) is yet another awesome Nokia engineer on team #SRLinux (and ☲ is an ancient Trigram (Bagua) meaning “Heart of Fire”). The gRPC Network Management Interface (gNMI) is a protocol originally developed by Google, it is used to configure network devices — such as those running #SRLinux —and/or retrieve real-time streaming telemetry. On the client side you need a library to interact with — and this is what Roman has been looking for but couldn’t find.
The best tools are those created by the people who really need them for themselves, and I count myself lucky to share in the fruits of their labor.
Alternative theory of the universe 🌠
Hah! Fooled you — that’s not Roman’s work. Although if you look on the right side of the page, and notice the convenient links to translations in various languages and to PDF — that is something he might do. Just to help his users, because it may be of use to them.
And in my humble opinion, in a very practical and meaningful way, Roman is in fact changing the way we perceive our world — by helping us to configure and test our networks in easy, automated ways.
Thank you, Roman! ☕ 👈 Click here to buy Roman a nice cup of coffee!
