Overview
In this episode from our ongoing Catalyst Center Automation Series, which we focus on is to enable telemetry to take full advantage of the Assurance capabilities in the Catalyst Center. During this exercise, we will discuss how to enable various resources for Catalyst Center to ensure that all aspects are enabled in Assurance. This allows you, the network administrator, to use the Assurance application within Catalyst Center to find a network error that fixes client and application connectivity issues. Additionally, with Northbound’s integration into Service Now, the ability to open incidents on this platform ensures that the Service Desk can help users in a timely manner. Please note that for full 365 views on device, customersand application at the Catalyst Center Licensing benefits is a requirement.
In this series we will cover the following;
- PnP Preparation – explains the overall steps of a Plug and Play setup
- Onboarding Templates – explains in detail how to deploy Day 0 templates
- N-Day Templates – Dives into N-Day template designs with regular and composite templates and use cases
- Application Policy – Explores Application Policy and SD-AVC in Catalyst Center and their usage
- Telemetry – explains how to deploy telemetry for insurance
- Advanced Automation – Explores advanced automation techniques
- Dynamic Automation – deployment lab for dynamic automation
Challenges
There are several aspects to consider when using network telemetry. Some of these considerations are as follows;
- Total number of endpoints
- Total number of devices to access the network
- The size of the Catalyst Center device in use
We will cover these aspects in this blog, leaving the lab only to enable telemetry.
What will I learn in the Telemetry Laboratory?
Catalyst Centers telemetry settings allow you to configure global network settings on devices to monitor and evaluate their health and user and application experience across the network. During the exercise, we will enable all the various remaining telemetry settings that are required for security. During Cable automation We have enabled some required telemetry settings in the lab. This happens automatically whenever any device is added to the site hierarchy during PnPgold Discovery process.
IN Cisco Catalyst Centeryou can configure global network settings when devices are assigned to a specific site. Telemetry polls network devices and collects telemetry data according to these settings:
- SNMP server
- Syslog server
- NetFlow Collector
- Wired monitoring of clients
- Enable wireless telemetry
The first two of these settings were configured during calls to Rest-API v Cable automation laboratory.
Netflow Primer
It is important to understand that some network devices have minimum allowed Netflow Collectors that can be configured. If you would need additional streams to other servers or management devices, you should include UDP Director in your design. UDP Director replicates a single inbound stream from any device to multiple management systems that require the resource.
Dimensioning of the catalytic center
In the recent release of Catalyst Center, we increased the number of endpoints on XL devices and further increased the number of some devices. To that end, here’s an updated graphic explaining the new sizing for the Catalyst Center. The increase in the number of endpoints, network devices, flows and sites allows Catalyst Center to scale for large networks. Taking into account different locations based on round trip time allows us to conveniently size clusters to get the most out of Assurance.
As a result, the lab deals with these topics in depth;
We’ll get a hands-on understanding of the steps involved in setting up a Catalyst Center and telemetry support environment to enable Assurance during these labs. The labs aim to help engineers quickly get started with Catalyst Center automation and help them work on their automation strategy. Additionally, these labs will provide customers with a permanent place to test changes to telemetry settings so they can understand what changes were made before deploying Catalyst Center to their networks. Finally, this environment will allow engineers to reduce the time and effort required to create a network instance.
In this little lab, diving into exactly which telemetry settings it uses and how to enable the device for telemetry through the Catalyst Center is crucial.
How do I get started?
Several sandbox labs are available within DCLOUD. These separate environments are there for you to use as you please at your scheduled time. Additionally, it allows us to start practicing different concepts without worrying about the impact on the production environment.
As a result, we hope to demystify some of the complexity of setting up automation and help customers navigate through alerts. To help customers transition to automation, we’ve put together a set of small, useful labs within a GitHub repository. In this way, these self-guided labs provide insight into the fundamentals of creating speed templates and offer examples that you can download and expand on. In addition, sample templates and supplied JSON files are for easy import into the Catalyst Centers template editor for faster adoption. Finally, some scripts are ready-made code exceptions that allow you to build your testing environment.
In the Wired Automation Lab, we’ll dive step-by-step into enabling telemetry to take full advantage of the warranty in the Catalyst Center. Second, we provide answers and explanations to many questions that come up during automation workshops. We hope you find the information useful and informative.
Where can I test and try out these labs?
DCLOUD lab environment
To help customers succeed with Cisco Catalyst Center automation, you can use the above labs as they were designed to work in the DCLOUD Cisco Enterprise Networks Hardware Sandbox Labs:
- Cisco Enterprise Networks Hardware Sandbox West DC
- Cisco Enterprise Networks Hardware Sandbox East DC
DCLOUD labs allow you to run these labs and provide an environment to try out different code samples. You can choose to develop and export your code for use in a production environment. This also gives you an environment where you can safely perform POC/POV methods and steps without damaging your production environment. The DCLOUD environment also negates the need for shipping equipment, lead times, and licensing issues needed to move quickly. Please follow DCLOUD best practices when using it.
Laboratory connectivity
The environment allows for use with a web browser client for non-VPN connections, access and also the AnyConnect VPN client connection for those who prefer it. You can choose from labs hosted at our San Jose facilities by selecting US West. Select Cisco Enterprise Network Sandbox. To access this or other content, including demos, labs, and training in DCLOUD, please contact your Cisco Account Team or Cisco Partner Account Team directly. Your account teams schedule a session and share it for you to use. After booking, follow the GitHub guide to complete the tasks according to DCLOUD best practices.
Enthusiastic
Cable automation lab content is housed in the existing DNAC-TEMPLATES repository to provide a one-stop shop for all the necessary tools, scripts, templates, and code samples. It has seven labs that build on tutorials to test methods in a lab environment. The repository was featured in a previous Cisco blog post on Catalyst Center templates earlier in May 2021.
More information
Catalyst Center TemplateLabs
Formerly named DNAC Template LABS within DNAC TEMPLATES The goal of the GitHub repository is to walk you through the typical steps required to activate the various automation tasks provided by Catalyst Center. This exercise will provide examples of templates used in Catalyst Center that we can modify for our use and test on devices in the LAB environment. Additional information within the lab provides a comprehensive explanation of automation methods using templates. Finally, the lab enables customers to use Catalyst Center workflows to practice onboarding deployments, DayN templates, and application policy automation across both wired and wireless platforms.
This Wired Automation lab is a hands-on guide to help engineers quickly get started with Catalyst Center automation and help them work on their deployment strategy. In addition, this lab will provide customers with a permanent place to test configurations for different use cases. Finally, this environment will allow engineers to reduce the time and effort required to create a network instance.
As a result, you will gain experience in setting up Plug and Play onboarding and templates and using all the features. In addition, you will use advanced templating methods and troubleshooting tools. These can help when troubleshooting to determine what is failing in the deployment.
New Catalyst Center Lab Content
Use this menu to navigate through the different parts of this GitHub repository. There are examples and explanatory readme files in multiple folders for reference. There are now two sets of labs and they are constantly expanding.
This newer and more modular lab approach is designed to take concepts from older labs and incorporate them in a newer, more modular format.
- Lab 1 Wired Automation – Covers green and brown field use cases (allow 4.0 hours)
- Lab 2 Wireless Automation – Covers traditional wireless automation (allow 4.0 hours)
- Lab 4 Rest-API Orchestration – Covers Cisco Catalyst Center automation via Postman with Rest-API (allow 2.0 hours)
- Lab 7 CICD Orchestration – Covers Python with JENKINS Orchestration via REST-API (allow 4.0 hours)
We will share additional labs and content with the Catalyst Center in an effort to meet all of your automation needs.
Finally, if you found this set of labs and repositories useful,
please fill in the comments and feedback how it could be improved.
We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a question or leave a comment below.
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