Stop Writing CLI — Start Validating Design

The Project That Triggered This Post Recently, I was assigned to a mid-scale network migration spanning three data centers. The architecture was straightforward but labor-intensive: dozens of VRFs, hundreds of point-to-point BGP sessions in a BGP fabric, and a VMware NSX overlay. Despite this modern setup, I was asked to manually write all of the configuration changes as CLI. After coding over 6,000 lines of CLI that night, I paused to reflect: ...

November 18, 2025 · 3 min · Gary Wong