Introduction
This book was written to help candidates improve their network programmability and automation skills—not only for preparing to take the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam but also for real-world skills in any production environment.
You can expect that the blueprint for the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam tightly aligns with the topics contained in this book. This was by design. You can follow along with the examples in this book by utilizing the tools and resources found on the DevNet website and other free utilities such as Postman and Python.
We are targeting any and all learners who are learning these topics for the first time as well as those who wish to enhance their network programmability and automation skillset.
Be sure to visit www.cisco.com to find the latest information on DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam requirements and to keep up to date on any new exams that are announced.
Goals and Methods
The most important and somewhat obvious goal of this book is to help you pass the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam. In fact, if the primary objective of this book were different, then the book’s title would be misleading; however, the methods used in this book to help you pass the DevNet Professional exam are designed to also make you much more knowledgeable about how to do your job. Although this book and the companion website together have more than enough questions to help you prepare for the actual exam, the method in which they are used is not to simply make you memorize as many questions and answers as you possibly can.
One key methodology used in this book is to help you discover the exam topics that you need to review in more depth, to help you fully understand and remember those details, and to help you prove to yourself that you have retained your knowledge of those topics. So, this book does not try to help you pass by memorization but helps you truly learn and understand the topics. The DevNet Professional exam is just one of the foundation exams in the DevNet certification suite, and the knowledge contained within is vitally important to consider yourself a truly skilled network developer. This book would do you a disservice if it didn’t attempt to help you learn the material. To that end, the book will help you pass the DevNet Professional exam by using the following methods:
Helping you discover which test topics you have not mastered
Providing explanations and information to fill in your knowledge gaps
Supplying exercises and scenarios that enhance your ability to recall and deduce the answers to test questions
Who Should Read This Book?
This book is intended to help candidates prepare for the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam. Not only can this book help you pass the exam, but it can also help you learn the necessary topics to provide value to your organization as a network developer.
Passing the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam is a milestone toward becoming a better network developer, which, in turn, can help with becoming more confident with these technologies.
Strategies for Exam Preparation
The strategy you use for the DevNet Professional exam might be slightly different than strategies used by other readers, mainly based on the skills, knowledge, and experience you already have obtained.
Regardless of the strategy you use or the background you have, the book is designed to help you get to the point where you can pass the exam with the least amount of time required. However, many people like to make sure that they truly know a topic and thus read over material that they already know. Several book features will help you gain the confidence that you need to be convinced that you know some material already and to also help you know what topics you need to study more.
The Companion Website for Online Content Review
All the electronic review elements, as well as other electronic components of the book, exist on this book’s companion website.
How to Access the Companion Website
To access the companion website, which gives you access to the electronic content with this book, start by establishing a login at www.ciscopress.com and registering your book. To do so, simply go to www.ciscopress.com/register and enter the ISBN of the print book: 9780137370443. After you have registered your book, go to your account page and click the Registered Products tab. From there, click the Access Bonus Content link to get access to the book’s companion website.
Note that if you buy the Premium Edition eBook and Practice Test version of this book from Cisco Press, your book will automatically be registered on your account page. Simply go to your account page, click the Registered Products tab, and select Access Bonus Content to access the book’s companion website.
How to Access the Pearson Test Prep (PTP) App
You have two options for installing and using the Pearson Test Prep application: a web app and a desktop app. To use the Pearson Test Prep application, start by finding the registration code that comes with the book. You can find the code in these ways:
Print book: Look in the cardboard sleeve in the back of the book for a piece of paper with your book’s unique PTP code.
Premium Edition: If you purchase the Premium Edition eBook and Practice Test directly from the Cisco Press website, the code will be populated on your account page after purchase. Just log in at www.ciscopress.com, click Account to see details of your account, and click the Digital Purchases tab.
Amazon Kindle: For those who purchase a Kindle edition from Amazon, the access code will be supplied directly from Amazon.
Other Bookseller eBooks: Note that if you purchase an eBook version from any other source, the practice test is not included because other vendors to date have not chosen to vend the required unique access code.
When you have the access code, to find instructions about both the PTP web app and the desktop app, follow these steps:
Step 1. Open this book’s companion website, as shown earlier in this Introduction under the heading “How to Access the Companion Website.”
Step 2. Click the Practice Exams button.
Step 3. Follow the instructions listed there both for installing the desktop app and for using the web app.
Note that if you want to use the web app only at this point, just navigate to www.pearsontestprep.com, establish a free login if you do not already have one, and register this book’s practice tests using the registration code you just found. The process should take only a couple of minutes.
How to Use This Book
Although this book could be read cover-to-cover, it is designed to be flexible and allow you to easily move between chapters and sections of chapters to cover just the material that you need more work with. This book was written to include not only reference materials and study guides for the exam but also rich reference material for your day-to-day technical requirements.
The core chapters, Chapters 1 through 17, cover the following topics:
Chapter 1, “Software Development Essentials”: This chapter introduces software architecture, architecture requirements, and software development models.
Chapter 2, “Software Quality Attributes”: This chapter discusses in detail quality attributes or nonfunctional requirements and discusses in detail modularity, scalability, and high availability in application design.
Chapter 3, “Architectural Considerations and Performance Management”: This chapter continues to discuss another set of nonfunctional requirements and how they relate to design trade-offs. It discusses performance, observability, and database selection criteria.
Chapter 4, “Version Control and Release Management with Git”: This chapter discusses the basics of version control, Git’s way of managing version controls and collaboration, and then covers in detail branching strategies and why they’re important for the success of any project.
Chapter 5, “Network APIs”: This chapter covers how software developers can use application programming interfaces (APIs) to communicate with and configure networks and how APIs are used to communicate with applications and other software.
Chapter 6, “API Development”: This chapter focuses on application programming interface development and covers both API design and API architecture.
Chapter 7, “Application Deployment”: This chapter covers the code-to-production process, including organizational structures, responsibilities, and tooling required. Historical as well as current deployment models are discussed, as well as design factors to enable portable applications between hosting locations.
Chapter 8, “Security in Application Design”: This chapter discusses security practices for application development. It starts by defining privacy and personally identifiable information and how to protect them. Then it covers the public key infrastructure (PKI), how to secure web applications, and the OAuth Authorization framework.
Chapter 9, “Infrastructure”: This chapter covers aspects of network infrastructure management and automation. Some historical context is provided, but exam preparation is focused on newer programmability features that enable automation and orchestration.
Chapter 10, “Automation”: This chapter covers topics such as SDN, APIs, and orchestration. Additional helpful context is provided around the impact to IT service management.
Chapter 11, “NETCONF and RESTCONF”: This chapter covers the NETCONF, YANG, and RESTCONF technologies with examples that will be helpful in your preparation and professional use.
Chapter 12, “Model-Driven Telemetry”: This chapter is focused on model-driven telemetry, its purpose, and how it is implemented. In support of your learning, exam preparation, and professional use, there are also examples for using MDT.
Chapter 13, “Open-Source Solutions”: This chapter covers several open-source solutions that are helpful in many environments. Examples for deployment and usage provide insight and help inform your implementation decisions.
Chapter 14, “Software Configuration Management”: This chapter discusses software configuration management: what is it, why is it important, and how do you decide which system is best for your project? We also discuss Ansible and Terraform and their strengths and weaknesses.
Chapter 15, “Hosting an Application on a Network Device”: This chapter provides insights on how to run containerized workloads on a network device. Some best practices are also shared to encourage your best uses.
Chapter 16, “Cisco Platforms”: Finally, this chapter contains a mix of practical API and SDK usage examples across several platforms, such as Webex, Meraki, Intersight, DNA Center, and AppDynamics. If you have some of these solutions, the examples should reveal methods to integrate with them programmatically. If you don’t use the platforms, this chapter should reveal the “art of the possible.”
Chapter 17, “Final Preparation”: This chapter details a set of tools and a study plan to help you complete your preparation for the DEVCOR 350-901 exam.
Certification Exam Topics and This Book
The questions for each certification exam are a closely guarded secret. However, we do know which topics you must know to successfully complete this exam. Cisco publishes them as an exam blueprint for the DevNet Professional DEVCOR 350-901 exam. Table I-1 lists each exam topic listed in the blueprint along with a reference to the book chapter that covers the topic. These are the same topics you should be proficient in when working with network programmability and automation in the real world.
Table I-1 DEVCOR 350-901 Exam Topics and Chapter References
DEVCOR 350-901 Exam Topic | Chapter(s) in Which Topic Is Covered |
1.0 Software Development and Design | |
1.1 Describe distributed applications related to the concepts of front-end, back-end, and load balancing | |
1.2 Evaluate an application design considering scalability and modularity | |
1.3 Evaluate an application design considering high availability and resiliency (including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud) | |
1.4 Evaluate an application design considering latency and rate limiting | |
1.5 Evaluate an application design and implementation considering maintainability | |
1.6 Evaluate an application design and implementation considering observability | |
1.7 Diagnose problems with an application given logs related to an event | |
1.8 Evaluate choice of database types with respect to application requirements (such as relational, document, graph, columnar, and time series) | |
1.9 Explain architectural patterns (monolithic, services oriented, microservices, and event driven) | |
1.10 Utilize advanced version control operations with Git 1.10.a Merge a branch 1.10.b Resolve conflicts 1.10.c git reset 1.10.d git checkout 1.10.e git revert | |
1.11 Explain the concepts of release packaging and dependency management | |
1.12 Construct a sequence diagram that includes API calls | |
2.0 Using APIs | |
2.1 Implement robust REST API error handling for timeouts and rate limits | |
2.2 Implement control flow of consumer code for unrecoverable REST API errors | |
2.3 Identify ways to optimize API usage through HTTP cache controls | |
2.4 Construct an application that consumes a REST API that supports pagination | |
2.5 Describe the steps in the OAuth2 three-legged authorization code grant flow | |
3.0 Cisco Platforms | |
3.1 Construct API requests to implement ChatOps with Webex Teams API | |
3.2 Construct API requests to create and delete objects using Firepower device management (FDM) | |
3.3 Construct API requests using the Meraki platform to accomplish these tasks 3.3.a Use Meraki Dashboard APIs to enable an SSID 3.3.b Use Meraki location APIs to retrieve location data | |
3.4 Construct API calls to retrieve data from Intersight | |
3.5 Construct a Python script using the UCS APIs to provision a new UCS server given a template | |
3.6 Construct a Python script using the Cisco DNA Center APIs to retrieve and display wireless health information | |
3.7 Describe the capabilities of AppDynamics when instrumenting an application | |
3.8 Describe steps to build a custom dashboard to present data collected from Cisco APIs | |
4.0 Application Deployment and Security | |
4.1 Diagnose a CI/CD pipeline failure (such as missing dependency, incompatible versions of components, and failed tests) | |
4.2 Integrate an application into a prebuilt CD environment leveraging Docker and Kubernetes | |
4.3 Describe the benefits of continuous testing and static code analysis in a CI pipeline | |
4.4 Utilize Docker to containerize an application | |
4.5 Describe the tenets of the “12-factor app” | |
4.6 Describe an effective logging strategy for an application | |
4.7 Explain data privacy concerns related to storage and transmission of data | |
4.8 Identify the secret storage approach relevant to a given scenario | |
4.9 Configure application specific SSL certificates | |
4.10 Implement mitigation strategies for OWASP threats (such as XSS, CSRF, and SQL injection) | |
4.11 Describe how end-to-end encryption principles apply to APIs | |
5.0 Infrastructure and Automation | Chapters 9 and 10 |
5.1 Explain considerations of model-driven telemetry (including data consumption and data storage) | |
5.2 Utilize RESTCONF to configure a network device including interfaces, static routes, and VLANs (IOS XE only) | |
5.3 Construct a workflow to configure network parameters with: 5.3.a Ansible playbook 5.3.b Puppet manifest | |
5.4 Identify a configuration management solution to achieve technical and business requirements | |
5.5 Describe how to host an application on a network device (including Catalyst 9000 and Cisco IOx-enabled devices) |
Each version of the exam can have topics that emphasize different functions or features, and some topics can be rather broad and generalized. The goal of this book is to provide the most comprehensive coverage to ensure that you are well prepared for the exam. Although some chapters might not address specific exam topics, they provide a foundation that is necessary for a clear understanding of important topics. Your short-term goal might be to pass this exam, but your long-term goal should be to become a qualified network developer.
It is also important to understand that this book is a “static” reference, whereas the exam topics are dynamic. Cisco can and does change the topics covered on certification exams often.
This exam guide should not be your only reference when preparing for the certification exam. You can find a wealth of information available at Cisco.com that covers each topic in great detail. If you think that you need more detailed information on a specific topic, read the Cisco documentation that focuses on that topic.
Note that as automation technologies continue to develop, Cisco reserves the right to change the exam topics without notice. Although you can refer to the list of exam topics in Table I-1, always check Cisco.com to verify the actual list of topics to ensure that you are prepared before taking the exam. You can view the current exam topics on any current Cisco certification exam by visiting the Cisco.com website, choosing Menu, and Training & Events, then selecting from the Certifications list. Note also that, if needed, Cisco Press might post additional preparatory content on the web page associated with this book at http://www.ciscopress.com/title/9780137370443. It’s a good idea to check the website a couple of weeks before taking your exam to be sure that you have up-to-date content.