200-901
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CCNA Automation
The course teaches software development fundamentals, API integration, Cisco platform programming, secure deployment, and automation, preparing candidates to design, build, and manage network‑enabled applications at scale.
120
Minutes
$330
Exam Cost
Who Should Take This
Software developers, network engineers, or IT professionals with at least one year of coding or automation experience should pursue this certification. It equips them to validate their ability to create and integrate applications on Cisco platforms, advance their DevOps skills, and enhance career prospects in network‑centric software development.
What's Covered
1
All domains in the Cisco Certified DevNet Associate (200-901) exam: Software Development and Design
2
, Understanding and Using APIs
3
, Cisco Platforms and Development
4
, Application Deployment and Security
5
, and Infrastructure and Automation
What's Included in AccelaStudy® AI
Adaptive Knowledge Graph
Practice Questions
Lesson Modules
Console Simulator Labs
Exam Tips & Strategy
20 Activity Formats
Course Outline
60 learning goals
1
Domain 1: Software Development and Design
5 topics
Understand software development practices
- Compare software development methodologies including Waterfall, Agile, Scrum, and Lean by evaluating iteration frequency, feedback loops, documentation requirements, and suitability for different project types.
- Describe common design patterns including MVC (Model-View-Controller), Observer, and Singleton and explain how each pattern solves recurring software design problems with decoupled components.
- Describe the purpose of unit testing, integration testing, and functional testing and explain how test-driven development (TDD) improves code quality through writing tests before implementation code.
- Apply Python unit testing with the unittest and pytest frameworks to write test cases, use assertions, create test fixtures, and run automated test suites for validating network automation scripts.
Understand version control with Git
- Apply Git version control operations including clone, add, commit, push, pull, branch, merge, and rebase to manage source code changes in a collaborative development workflow.
- Describe Git branching strategies including feature branches, release branches, and Git Flow and explain how pull requests and code reviews enforce quality before merging changes to main branches.
Understand Python programming fundamentals
- Apply Python data types (strings, integers, floats, lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets), control structures (if/elif/else, for, while), and functions to solve basic programming tasks.
- Apply Python file I/O operations, exception handling (try/except/finally), and standard library modules to read, parse, and write data in common formats (JSON, YAML, CSV, XML).
- Apply Python virtual environments and pip package management to isolate project dependencies, install third-party libraries, and generate requirements files for reproducible development environments.
Understand data formats and parsing
- Compare JSON, XML, and YAML data serialization formats by evaluating syntax rules, human readability, parsing complexity, and common use cases in network automation and API communication.
Understand object-oriented programming concepts
- Describe object-oriented programming concepts in Python including classes, objects, inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, and methods for organizing reusable code in automation scripts.
- Apply Python classes and objects to create reusable network device abstractions including device connection classes, configuration template classes, and inventory management modules.
2
Domain 2: Understanding and Using APIs
5 topics
Understand REST API concepts
- Describe REST API architectural constraints including stateless communication, uniform interface, resource identification via URIs, and CRUD operations mapped to HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE).
- Describe HTTP response status codes including 200 (OK), 201 (Created), 400 (Bad Request), 401 (Unauthorized), 403 (Forbidden), 404 (Not Found), and 500 (Server Error) and interpret their meaning in API interactions.
- Apply the Python requests library to construct and send HTTP requests to REST APIs, handle JSON response parsing, implement error handling, and manage pagination for large result sets.
Understand API authentication mechanisms
- Compare API authentication mechanisms including Basic Authentication, API keys, token-based authentication, and OAuth 2.0 by evaluating security level, implementation complexity, and common usage scenarios.
- Implement token-based API authentication in Python including obtaining access tokens, including tokens in request headers, handling token expiration and refresh, and storing credentials securely.
Understand webhooks and event-driven APIs
- Describe webhook concepts including callback URLs, event subscription, payload delivery, and signature verification and compare push-based webhooks with pull-based polling for event notification.
Interpret API documentation and SDK usage
- Interpret API reference documentation including endpoint URIs, HTTP methods, request/response schemas, query parameters, and authentication requirements to construct valid API calls.
- Describe the role of SDKs in simplifying API consumption and compare using raw HTTP requests versus platform SDKs for Cisco Meraki, DNA Center, and Webex API interactions.
Understand additional API paradigms
- Compare REST and GraphQL API paradigms by evaluating query flexibility, over-fetching and under-fetching, endpoint structure, and schema definition approaches for API consumers.
- Describe API rate limiting and throttling mechanisms including rate limit headers, retry-after responses, exponential backoff strategies, and pagination patterns for handling large API result sets.
- Describe API versioning strategies including URI path versioning, query parameter versioning, and header-based versioning and explain how versioning maintains backward compatibility.
3
Domain 3: Cisco Platforms and Development
5 topics
Describe Cisco collaboration platform APIs
- Describe Cisco Webex APIs and SDKs for creating messaging bots, managing rooms and memberships, posting messages with adaptive cards, and integrating collaboration features into custom applications.
- Describe Webex webhook registration and event handling for receiving real-time notifications about messages, room membership changes, and meeting events in bot and integration workflows.
Describe Cisco networking platform APIs
- Describe Cisco Meraki Dashboard API capabilities for managing networks, devices, clients, and VLANs programmatically and explain the API key authentication and rate limiting mechanisms.
- Describe Cisco DNA Center Intent API for network device discovery, provisioning, path trace, client health monitoring, and template-based configuration deployment.
- Describe Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) programmability including the APIC controller REST API, tenant/EPG/contract model, and how policy-driven networking is managed through API calls.
- Describe Cisco ThousandEyes API for retrieving network performance metrics, internet path visualization data, and alert configurations for monitoring application delivery across the internet.
Describe Cisco security platform APIs
- Describe Cisco Firepower and SecureX API capabilities for retrieving threat intelligence, managing security policies, querying event logs, and automating incident response workflows.
- Describe Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) ERS API and pxGrid for managing network access policies, guest accounts, endpoint profiling, and real-time context sharing with security ecosystem partners.
Describe Cisco compute platform APIs
- Describe Cisco UCS Manager and Intersight APIs for server provisioning, firmware management, service profile deployment, and monitoring compute infrastructure programmatically.
Describe IOS XE programmability features
- Describe Cisco IOS XE programmability features including guest shell for on-box Python scripting, gRPC model-driven telemetry, and day-zero provisioning with ZTP (Zero Touch Provisioning).
- Describe Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) programmability including vManage REST API for template management, device monitoring, policy deployment, and real-time analytics retrieval.
4
Domain 4: Application Deployment and Security
4 topics
Understand containerization and deployment
- Describe Docker container concepts including images, containers, Dockerfiles, registries, port mapping, and volume mounting and explain how containers provide consistent application deployment environments.
- Apply Docker commands to build images from Dockerfiles, run containers, manage container lifecycle (start, stop, remove), view logs, and connect containers using Docker networks.
- Compare virtual machines and containers by evaluating resource overhead, startup time, isolation level, portability, and density for application deployment in development and production environments.
- Describe Docker Compose for defining and running multi-container applications using YAML configuration files to specify services, networks, volumes, and environment variables.
Understand CI/CD pipeline concepts
- Describe CI/CD pipeline concepts including continuous integration (automated builds and tests), continuous delivery (automated staging), and continuous deployment (automated production release) stages.
- Describe the role of CI/CD tools including Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Drone in automating build, test, and deployment workflows triggered by code repository events.
Understand application security
- Identify OWASP Top 10 web application security risks including injection, broken authentication, sensitive data exposure, and cross-site scripting and describe basic mitigation strategies for each.
- Describe secure coding practices including input validation, output encoding, parameterized queries, secure credential storage, and HTTPS enforcement for protecting applications from common vulnerabilities.
- Describe how to securely manage secrets and credentials in applications using environment variables, vault services, and configuration management to prevent hardcoded credentials in source code.
Understand application observability
- Describe application monitoring and logging concepts including structured logging, log levels (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL), and centralized log aggregation for troubleshooting.
- Describe the role of health check endpoints, application metrics, and distributed tracing in monitoring containerized and microservice application deployments for reliability and performance.
5
Domain 5: Infrastructure and Automation
5 topics
Describe network programmability protocols
- Describe NETCONF protocol operations including get, get-config, edit-config, and lock/unlock and explain how NETCONF uses XML-encoded RPC over SSH to manage network device configurations.
- Describe RESTCONF protocol as an HTTP-based alternative to NETCONF and explain how it uses standard REST operations with JSON or XML payloads to access YANG-modeled configuration data.
- Describe YANG data models including module structure, containers, lists, leaves, and augmentations and explain how YANG defines the schema for NETCONF and RESTCONF device configuration.
- Compare NETCONF, RESTCONF, and CLI for network device management by evaluating structured data support, transactional behavior, automation suitability, and human interaction characteristics.
Automate network infrastructure with tools
- Apply Ansible playbooks and modules to automate network device configuration including inventory file creation, YAML playbook structure, ios_command and ios_config modules, and idempotent operations.
- Apply Python libraries (Netmiko, paramiko, ncclient) to connect to network devices via SSH and NETCONF for automated configuration changes, show command collection, and backup operations.
- Describe Cisco pyATS and Genie framework for automated network testing including testbed definition, device connections, parsers for show command output, and validation test cases.
- Describe model-driven telemetry concepts including dial-in and dial-out subscription modes, gRPC transport, and how streaming telemetry replaces periodic SNMP polling for real-time network monitoring.
Understand infrastructure as code concepts
- Describe infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts including declarative versus imperative approaches, state management, drift detection, and the benefits of version-controlled infrastructure definitions.
- Describe Terraform concepts including providers, resources, data sources, state files, and plan/apply workflow for provisioning and managing infrastructure across multiple platforms.
- Compare Ansible, Terraform, and Python scripting for network automation by evaluating declarative versus procedural paradigms, state management, learning curve, and Cisco platform support.
Describe controller-based networking automation
- Describe software-defined networking (SDN) architecture including the separation of control plane and data plane, northbound and southbound APIs, and the role of controllers in centralized network management.
- Describe how Cisco DNA Center APIs enable intent-based network automation including network design, policy creation, device provisioning, and assurance monitoring through programmatic interfaces.
Describe DevNet development resources
- Describe Cisco DevNet ecosystem resources including Sandbox lab environments, Learning Labs, API documentation portals, and code exchange repositories for developing and testing network automation.
- Describe the role of Postman collections and Swagger/OpenAPI specifications in testing and documenting REST APIs and explain how they accelerate API integration development workflows.
Scope
Included Topics
- All domains in the Cisco Certified DevNet Associate (200-901) exam: Software Development and Design (15%), Understanding and Using APIs (20%), Cisco Platforms and Development (15%), Application Deployment and Security (15%), and Infrastructure and Automation (20%).
- Software development fundamentals including version control with Git, Python programming, unit testing, code review practices, design patterns, and software development lifecycle methodologies.
- API technologies including REST API consumption, authentication mechanisms (Basic Auth, API keys, OAuth), Webhook callbacks, pagination, error handling, and working with Cisco platform APIs (Meraki, DNA Center, Webex, ACI).
- Application deployment concepts including containers (Docker), CI/CD pipelines, cloud deployment models, application security (OWASP Top 10), and infrastructure as code.
- Network infrastructure automation using Ansible playbooks, NETCONF/RESTCONF protocols, YANG data models, Python scripting with Netmiko and pyATS, and Cisco DNA Center APIs.
Not Covered
- Advanced software engineering topics including microservices architecture design, distributed systems theory, and database administration beyond basic CRUD operations.
- Professional-level DevNet topics including advanced YANG model creation, gRPC implementation, and service mesh configuration.
- Full-stack web application development including frontend frameworks, CSS styling, and complex JavaScript beyond API consumption.
- Cloud-native application architecture including Kubernetes orchestration, service mesh, and serverless platform design.
- Advanced cybersecurity topics including penetration testing, malware analysis, and security operations center procedures.
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