One of the core principles of IETF standards is that they should continue to evolve and be revised based on real world experience. RFC 8342, Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA), is an example of one such standard. It is the datastore which ties together the worlds of YANG data models and NETCONF (and RESTCONF). Originally, the NETCONF standards only had the concepts of <startup>, <running>, and <candidate> datastores. Real world experience with NETCONF and YANG has shown that this datastore architecture needed to evolve. This is what led to the development of NMDA. NMDA builds on the original architecture of <startup>, <running>, and <candidate> datastores by adding two new datastores called <intended> and <operational>. This is an exciting new development in the world of NETCONF and YANG.
NMDA is a core NETCONF and YANG standard going forward. ConfD 7.3, our latest release, has introduced support for NMDA. Understanding why NMDA exists, what NMDA is, and how ConfD NMDA supports NMDA is essential knowledge for anyone who is working with programmability driven by NETCONF (or RESTCONF) and YANG. Our latest application note, “NMDA and ConfD”, provides this knowledge.
Readers will learn about how to use NSO as a tool for NETCONF and YANG interoperability and best practices testing as well as some of the possible issues that can be caught during testing!
Sincerely,
John Lawitzke, ConfD Product Manager
