With the number of network devices seeing exponential growth over the years, it has become very crucial to manage and monitor networks. This has given rise to various Network Management Systems (NMS) that promise to improve network administration. However, with the increasing size of networks, they have become more heterogenous with a mix of networking elements from different vendors. Data representation and collection has become a challenge, and a difficult one at that. In a heterogeneous network, each vendor may have their own different ways of representing data, further complicating network management. Hence the need arises to have network management based on principles such as uniformity, visibility, and control.

OpenConfig vendor-neutral data models can help solve these network management issues with uniform data representation. OpenConfig supports YANG data models for configuring and managing multiple vendor networks easily. Read more about the YANG data modeling language here. However, collecting this network data from thousands of network devices can pose scaling issues. This is where subscription based gNMI transportation and telemetry streaming come to the rescue.