Simplify Hybrid Cloud Networking with Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  – Leonardo da Vinci

For IT, complexity is the antithesis of agility. However, with the increased demand for remote healthcare, distance learning, hybrid work, and surging dependence on online retail, there is an urgent shift to hybrid and cloud-native applications to keep up with the necessary digital transformations—thus adding complexity.

Hybrid cloud is now the reality for nearly all enterprises. Workloads are distributed across on-premises, edge, and public clouds. However, seamless operations of hybrid cloud applications across distributed environments needs to address stringent location-dependent requirements such as low latency, regional data compliance, and resiliency. Adding to the complexity is the additional need for governance—compliance, security, and availability—to which networking teams need to adhere. The need for visibility and insights closer to where data is created and processed—on-premises, cloud, and at the edge—is also critical.

Hybrid Cloud Networking Challenges

 

How does an operations’ team deal with this complex new hybrid cloud networking reality? They need three operational capabilities:

◉ Obtain a unified correlated and comprehensive view of the infrastructure.

◉ Gain the ability to respond proactively across people, process, and technology silos.

◉ Deliver speed of business, without increasing operating costs and tool-sprawl.

It is a multidimensional challenge for IT to keep applications and networks in sync. With the ever-increasing scope of the roles of NetOps and DevOps, an automation toolset is needed to accelerate hybrid cloud operations and securely manage the expansion from on-prem to cloud.

Flexible Hybrid Cloud Networking with Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Cisco Nexus Dashboard 2.1, the newest of Cisco’s cloud networking platform innovations, will help IT simplify transition to hybrid applications using a single agile platform. Besides bridging the gap in tooling, one of the major capabilities of the Nexus Dashboard is enabling a flexible operational model for different personas—NetOps, DevOps, SecOps, and CloudOps—across a plethora of use cases.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard: One Scalable, Extensible Platform Across Global Hybrid Infrastructure

Conventionally, operators relied on disjointed tools for specific functions across connectivity, visibility, and security. With multiple capabilities being natively integrated into the Cisco Nexus Dashboard, as well as 3rd party services, Cisco is simplifying the overall experience for IT.

Operators can now manage their hybrid cloud network infrastructure with ease from a single automation and operations platform, Cisco Nexus Dashboard—whether they are running Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) or Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) in their hybrid cloud infrastructures.

New innovations with Nexus Dashboard 2.1 include availability on AWS and Azure marketplaces; Nexus Dashboard One View, which provides a single cohesive view of all the sites being managed and the services installed across Nexus Dashboard clusters; advanced endpoint analytics; scalable connectivity through Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO); Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI); Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (NDDB) service; and many more capabilities. Let’s look at five capabilities of Cisco Nexus Dashboard 2.1 that are delighting customers.

1. Hybrid Cloud Connectivity at Scale with Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator

New hybrid cloud capabilities include support for Google Cloud—in addition to AWS and Azure integrations—and connectivity automation capabilities to enable new use cases, such as:

◉ External Connectivity: Cloud VPCs/VNet to external devices (branch router, SD-WAN edge, colocation routers, or on-prem routers)

◉ Hybrid Cloud Connectivity: Automate connectivity for GCP, AWS, and Azure clouds and on-premises ACI sites using BGP and IPSec

◉ Stitching connectivity: Cloud VPCs/VNET, On-Prem VRFs, including route management

Connectivity is established by BGP peering and IPSec tunnels connecting the cloud site’s Cloud Services Routers (CSR) or Google Cloud’s Native Cloud Router, to the external devices. Once connectivity is established, IT can enable route leak configurations to allow subnets from the external sites to establish connectivity with the cloud site’s VPCs/VNETs.

2. Change Management Workflow with Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator

In a modern enterprise IT team, there are typically multiple personas involved from design to deployment. The design team (Designer Persona) can create and edit the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator templates and send them to the deployment team (Approver/Deployer Persona) for approval. The deployment team reviews and approve templates ahead of a change management window and queues the templates for deployment during the actual change management window.

Starting with the latest version, Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator 3.4(1) release, a structured persona-based change management workflow provides additional operational flexibility. Three personas for template management—Designer, Approver, and Deployer roles—are available. An admin can assume one of these roles or a combination of them.

◉ Designers: Create and edit template application policies and sends them to Approvers for review and approval.

◉ Approvers: Review the templates and either approves for deployment or rejects the proposed changes and sends it back to the Designer to update the template based on comments.

◉ Deployers: Deploys templates or initiates a rollback to previous version of template.

When Approvers review the templates, they have a GitHub-style “diff view” to clearly compare the before and after changes so they can easily review, approve, reject, and comment on the template differences.

Deployers have two additional new capabilities for effective change management operations:

◉ Configuration preview: Preview of the exact configuration—XML Post and graphical views—that will be deployed to the sites so the Deployer can decide to proceed or abort deployment commit.

◉ Template versioning / rollback: Each template is automatically versioned during save or deploy, giving the Deployer the ability to rollback to previous template versions. During rollback the Deployer can see the GitHub style diff between two versions and decide to proceed with the rollback.

Since Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator change management is fully API based, IT can integrate the workflow with in-house tools currently in use.

3. Unify Hybrid Cloud Operations with Nexus Dashboard One View

With Nexus Dashboard 2.1, IT can operate their distributed environment across multiple clusters from a single focal point of control, with the ability to span visibility into fabrics. The scale out architecture adapts to growing operational needs while the One View capability provides a single pane of glass experience, with support for Single Sign On (SSO) and Role Based Access controls (RBAC). This enables operators to consume insights, advisory, and assurance stack as a unified offering to address prevention, diagnosis, and remediation.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard One View

 

Nexus Dashboard 2.1 takes visibility of network traffic up a notch with support for flow drops, giving IT the ability to identify packet drops in the network as well as the location and reasons. Flows impacted due to events in a switch like buffer, policer, forwarding drops, ACL drops, policer drops, etc. are identified using Flow Table Events (FTE).

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker

In addition, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (NDDB) is a one of the newest Nexus Dashboard service that facilitates visibility by filtering the aggregated traffic and forwarding traffic of interest to the tools for analysis. It is a multi-tenant-capable solution that can be used with both Cisco Nexus and Cisco Catalyst fabrics.

4. Predictive Change Management with Nexus Dashboard Insights

IT can now predict the impact of the intended configuration changes to reduce risk.

◉ Test and validate proposed configurations before rolling out the changes

◉ Proactive checks to prevent compliance violations, while minimizing downtime and Total Cost of Ownership

◉ Continuous assurance to address compliance and security posture

Predictive Change Management with Nexus Dashboard Insights

5. Nexus Dashboard APIs: Automation and Operational Agility for NetOps and DevOps

Cisco Nexus Dashboard now enables a rich suite of services through APIs for third-party developers to build custom apps and integrations. Nexus Dashboard APIs enable automation of intent using policy, lifecycle management, and governance with a common workflow. For example, IT can consume ITSM and SIEM solutions with ServiceNow and Splunk apps available through Nexus Dashboard.

The HashiCorp Terraform and Red Hat Ansible modules published for Nexus Dashboard enables DevOps, CloudOps, and NetOps teams to drive infrastructure automation, maintain network configuration as code, and embed the infrastructure config as part of the CI/CD pipeline for operational agility.

Our Customers Love Nexus Dashboard, and You Will Too!

As a unified, simple to use automation and operations platform, Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the focal point that customers such as T-Systems can use to build, operate, monitor, troubleshoot, and manage their hybrid cloud networking infrastructure.

Are You Ready for Simplicity?

In IT operations, network automation is the key to simplify hybrid cloud complexity, meet KPIs, and increase ROI. Incorporating the needs of NetOps, DevOps, SecOps and CloudOps for full lifecycle operations is table stakes to make this a reality. The latest updates to Cisco Nexus Dashboard deliver the simplicity expected by IT operations teams to become a trusted partner in their digital transformation journey.

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading

Cisco wireless 3D analyzer: A game changer in simplifying WiFi planning, monitoring, and troubleshooting

Wireless connections are ubiquitous and have become a part of our daily lives. But planning and then maintaining a Wi-Fi network, optimized for today’s radio coverage and capacity requirements, may not be a daily or even yearly task for an otherwise seasoned network administrator.

While wireless technologies are ubiquitous, they still interact with the physical environment.  Architecting the best coverage for a specific environment depends on many different factors like obstacles (walls, doors, windows), building geometry and materials as well as the number of users and intended usage. Looking across verticals demonstrates a wide range in complexity that can be encountered within different environments. For example, covering a moderate sized Enterprise Office space could be as simple as correctly placing some APs with omni-directional antennas, while covering a high ceiling warehouse means directional antennas to cover the space and more engineering to get it right. The challenge is that RF, unless visualized somehow, is invisible.  Seeing the RF in enough context to determine the correct angles, power, coverage, and capacity needs requires good tools.

Our new solution

Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer changes the overall planning and maintenance experience for network operators. It provides a visual 3D immersive experience that simplifies many of the aspects of the processes mentioned above. At the same time its deep analysis ensures insights into the key success factors required.

Typical workflow for a new site looks like this:

◉ Planning, laying out the deployment at scale and analyzing the proper placement.

◉ Deployment of the equipment and on-boarding the site.

◉ Coverage validation, ensuring that the coverage meets the designed requirements.

◉ Tuning of the network configurations to optimize the coverage and capacity.

Adding the floor map to the management server to monitor static 2D heat maps.

Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer allows the user to perform these planning and deployment operations remotely on their laptop well before ever placing products on the floor space. Post deployment, the Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer correlates the existing telemetry data along with the predictive results to provide a unified view of everything needed to dynamically monitor the complex interactions occurring daily on the network. This drastically reduces the OPEX needed for the same operations, while providing a simplified and intuitive user experience.

Solution building blocks

Here are the main components of the solution

Figure 1 – 3D Analyzer Solution Building Blocks

Cisco Wireless Network is the overall network infrastructure consisting of APs, sensors, switches, wireless controllers, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and other network resources. It is needed to provide the edge services for the client devices.

Cisco DNA Center is the single point in the system that provides Day 0 with automation of provisioning and on-boarding tasks to life cycle monitoring/management and analysis. It also imports floor maps of the customer buildings.

Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer is a web-app that runs on the network administrator’s browser. Moreover, it connects to Cisco DNA Center through https. The system uses state of the art 3D visualization and General-Purpose GPU technologies to build predictive models of the floorspace’s wireless environment. It allows the user to have 3D visual representations of the network coverage, its capacity, and many related insights on the same.

Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer brings the wealth of wireless telemetry data already available in Cisco DNA Center and combines this with the powerful context that the interactive 3D model can provide. The analyzer not only allows the user to see all this information in context, but also allows the powerful analysis engine to combine thousands of data points and provide actionable conclusions. The system minimizes the manual tuning, requiring a site visit, to optimize the network. The systems, using over-the-air measurements, allows verification of proper operations or gives clear indications on what will require some tuning, not just on Day 0, but for the life cycle of the deployment to Day n.

How does it work?

The Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer provides both Life Cycle Management and Planning within an immersive 3D operational experience.

Planning

Given a CAD or Ekahau Project file, that contains data regarding walls and materials, the app generates a 3D model of the environment and uses predictive modeling to display the RF coverage from the floor to the ceiling. Input for the model relies on telemetry available to accurately describe the current power, channels, and even antenna coordinates dynamically to render the environment. The powerful analysis engine looks at the millions of interactions between the access points, client devices, sensor APs, and the described physical environment across the 3D floor area. The 3D Analyzer can dynamically identify and isolate for view any service level issues discovered.

Figure 2 – Planning Prediction (iso-surfaces view)

Maintenance

Unlike a traditional static 2D heat map, the Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer also correlates real time data from the network. This is possible through the Cisco DNA Center telemetry and the Catalyst stack architecture, sensors, and assurance data. It allows correlation of the predictive results with the actual measured ground truth in the 3D floor map. This not only provides visual assurance of the accuracy, but a dynamic way to alert to harmful changes in the physical world.  The 3D environment is augmented with the access points’ runtime health score as well as other critical data at multiple levels within the “virtual reality”.  See the health scores below inside the colored tear drops.

Figure 3 – Prediction and Measurement (point cloud view)

Also please note that available sensor measurements are also integrated into the overall big picture of your network.  Sensors are shown above in the circles labeled S.

The below chart illustrates the main data flows driving the 3D Analyzer’s view of the physical world. It’s a lot of correlation, and an unprecedented view of the network’s context.

The Cisco Catalyst network provides live data to Cisco DNA Center, which is drawn on by Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer. Using the floor maps, actual inventory HW models and current configurations, the app can generate the predictions and their correlation with the live data, providing a full 3D context rich visualization environment.

Key use cases

Here are a few use cases that Cisco believes brings new efficiencies and accuracy to your view of the network.

Visual insights

The Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer correlates the predicted data along with telemetry inputs, analyzes the results, and provides insights into the networks behavior. In the example below, the system detected that 67% of the floor’s RSSI coverage falls below the user-configured KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of -70dBm. With a single mouse click on the Insight, the environment is configured instantly to highlight the exact location of deficiency, instantly providing a clear and actionable view.

Figure 4 – Visual Insights

Detection of Channel Interference

On a wireless network, interference is the opposite of performance.  By changing the view to “interference” the visualization now highlights areas where the network interferes with itself.  In addition, the APs and Channel selections responsible are highlighted clearly to quickly provide context and identify the source.

The 3D analyzer not only detects and alerts to these issues, but it also allows the administrators to safely model solutions in real time without making changes to the configurations in the physical world.

Figure 5 – Co-Channel Interference Detection

The system can detect multiple types of interferences (co-channel, adjacent-channel, neighbor), together with interferences coming from other floors. Here is a multi-floor 3D representation of coverage that could create interference.

Figure 6 – Multi-floor coverage 3D visualization

High Ceiling Environment Analysis

High ceiling environments, such as a warehouse, constitute challenging use cases, often mis-treated in design practice. Increasingly, it is not enough to only provide good coverage at the floor level. With automation and operations taking users to all levels within the physical environment, it has become increasingly important to understand the effectiveness of coverage from the floor to the ceiling. A 2D map can show the RF at an assumed user level but visualizing the coverage at every level in between can become a chore. The 3D visualization not only displays this but will allow the visualization to show as a scan with 6-inch resolution in elevation slices. The resulting visualization allows the user to visualize different configurations and effective solutions based on the modeled environments data in terms of shelves, racks, boxes, and capacity levels.

Figure 7 – Warehouse view

The coverage predictions consider all these obstacles, together with the actual antenna data to provide holistic floor views. Optimal efficiency is not an accident, it is planned. Through the lifecycle of the network, plans can and do change. The 3D analyzer can help watch it for you.

Figure 8 – Warehouse point cloud view

Figure 9 – Automatic Elevation Scanner

The picture above shows an elevation scanning playback. It allows users to get insights about coverage at each elevation from floor to ceiling.

First Person View 

Invoking the first-person view allows the administrator to step into the modeled environment and view it from the user plane.  The constant telemetry readouts while moving through the environment and mousing over the deployed assets all lead to an unprecedented ability to understand the physical environment.  All this without even getting in the car.

Figure 10 – First Person View

Antenna Propagation

Challenging high ceilings, or high-density environments often require specific antennas to achieve desired results. It can be difficult for many people to visualize how a particular antenna type will fit into the coverage environment. With the Cisco Wireless 3D Analyzer this becomes easy. The administrator can visualize the coverage patterns at all RSSI values and see how an angle could be optimized. Moreover, the administrator can check how a different antenna can provide the optimal solution to the challenge.

Figure 11 – Antenna propagation view

Being able to visualize changes to existing or new solutions within a known environment not only allows for quick assessments for fluid change management, but also provides a safe environment to build confidence and skills in the management staff. Wireless is much more fun when you can see it. By the way, you get all of this “before” ever setting a foot on the site.

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading

Appearing For CCNA 200-301 Exam? CLICK HERE.

Making the first steps in IT can be challenging. But, there are many solutions to make this path more straightforward, and one of them is obtaining a certification. And if you want to establish a career corresponding to networking, consider passing the CCNA 200-301 exam that will get you the CCNA certification and qualify you to get entry-level jobs as a network engineer and network administrator, to mention a few.

Overview of CCNA 200-301 Exam

Before sitting for the CCNA 200-301 exam, it is vital to know all the information concerning it. The certification exam has a duration of 120 minutes, consisting of 90-110 questions, and is taken in the English and Japanese languages. To schedule the exam, you require to create an account on the Pearson VUE website.

The CCNA 200-301 exam syllabus is split into different sections. To pass the exam, the applicants must prove a solid comprehension of the following CCNA topics:

• Security Fundamentals – 15%
• IP Services – 10%
• Automation & Programmability – 10%
• Network Fundamentals – 20%
• IP Connectivity – 25%
• Network Access – 20%

The percentage designates the number of questions corresponding to each domain that will be asked in the exam. Keep in mind that other topics can also be incorporated in the exam without former notice. Still, to raise your odds of passing the CCNA 200-301 exam, you better stick to these topics.

The opportunity of the available networking jobs is broad since the test emphasizes networking topics and security, automation, and others. At the same time, you require to know some preparation strategies to include the CCNA syllabus with ease and boost your IT career. Let’s dive into the exam preparation tips.

Tips for CCNA 200-301 Exam Preparation

1. Obtain CCNA 200-301 Exam Information

A vital step in studying for any exam is to obtain a list of the topics to be studied. And the more comprehensive it is, the more attention you should pay to this phase. Regarding the CCNA 200-301 exam, you can find a complete outline from Cisco’s official webpage. Moreover, it’s also vital to know what types of CCNA exam questions, how much time you’ll be given, and other facets.

2. Make the most of the Available Resources

There are a lot of study resources available for the 200-301 exam available online to help you know what to expect and what to center your preparation on. Official training courses, study guides, practice tests, and videos will help you in understanding everything required.

Why Take CCNA Practice Test to Ace CCNA 200-301 Exam?

To some extent, it is not good to depend only on the official study resources and books for the CCNA 200-301 exam preparation. Make sure you add on these resources with the CCNA practice test since learning with them is one of the best means for evaluating yourself and recognizing knowledge gaps.

Must Read: CCNA 200-301 Exam: Details, Preparation Options and Career Scope

Most applicants think that taking the CCNA practice test is answering a series of questions, but this is the whole thing. A practice test makes you familiar with the exam environment and time limitations.

CCNA practice test follows the same pattern as the actual CCNA 200-301 exam and helps you figure out your weaknesses and strong areas. But, you must ensure that you are performing practice tests from authentic and verified platforms only.

Why Obtain CCNA Certification?

• CCNA certification benefits employers and employees in the IT field. Many applicants have experienced career or pay boost after acquiring the CCNA certification by passing CCNA 200-301 exam.
• It has been noticed that CCNA certified professionals are designated to receive higher-paying jobs when compared to other non-certified peers.
• IT professionals or Networks engineers with a CCNA certification hold great possibilities of getting a promotion if they are presently working in an IT organization.
• The knowledge acquired throughout the preparation of CCNA 200-01 exam preparation can be implemented in real-world scenarios.
• 93% of employers all over the world consider that CCNA certified professionals are more well-versed and add more value to their organizations.
• All of the Cisco organizations and partners are known to prefer and employ people with CCNA certification.
• Even a top-class network engineer with 90% marks in graduation is required to confirm his IT skills with CCNA certification.

Wrap Up

Passing the CCNA 200-301 exam may be tough, but it is surely possible. And utilizing the resources mentioned in this article can enhance your odds of success. Use the CCNA practice test to gauge your knowledge and test-taking skills in advance, pass the exam, and start your rise on the IT career ladder.

Continue reading

Cisco Silicon One Enables the Best Routers

It’s not every day you get to work on products that continue to evolve so quickly that before you finish talking about one device the next generation comes out. However, with Cisco Silicon One™ that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We recently announced our 19.2 Tbps P100 piece of routing silicon and I wanted to spend some time going over what it means from a system perspective.

Cisco Silicon One P100—In a class of its own

There are several types of routing silicon available on the market today from third-party silicon providers to full system vendors. This silicon covers a variety of market needs but broadly speaking routing silicon breaks down into silicon that is built for core, peering, and aggregation markets versus those focusing on broadband aggregation. If we take a look at all the silicon currently available on the market, it’s clear that Cisco Silicon One is in a class of its own, and still today there’s no routing silicon that achieves higher bandwidth, even than our original Q100 announced back in 2019. Since then, we rolled out the Q200 with higher bandwidth and lower power consumption than the Q100. Today, less than 24 months from our initial Q100 launch and just 12 months from our Q200 announcement, we released the P100, further increasing our lead over the competition. We believe the Cisco Silicon One P100 is 2.6 times higher ethernet bandwidth than other routing silicon in the market.

The Cisco Silicon One P100 builds upon the great foundation that we created with Cisco Silicon One but continues to add features, buffering, scale, and programmability enhancements while growing the bandwidth.

Figure 1. Routing silicon available in 2021

Because Cisco Silicon One devices can flexibly assign ports to be generic ethernet or a fully scheduled fabric, the Cisco Silicon One architecture enables optimized fixed boxes and modular systems.

Figure 2. Cisco Silicon One – Common architecture across form factors

This capability is unique in the industry, and it allows us to offer products from a fixed box measuring just one rack-unit with a single piece of silicon, to a massive modular chassis with many pieces of silicon, to a fully disaggregated chassis with even more pieces of silicon. This is all accomplished with a common architecture, SDK, and P4 forwarding code.

This means that when we come out with a new piece of routing silicon, we enable our customers to enjoy benefits across their portfolio and network.

If I try to oversimplify the impacts of the Cisco Silicon One P100 in the market, we see that:

◉ P100 enables high bandwidth fixed boxes with 6–12 times less silicon. This leads to massive power, space, and cost savings while simultaneously reducing latency.

◉ P100 enables modular systems that are more than 2 times higher bandwidth than anything else available on the market, with the industry’s first 36×800, 28.8 Tbps modular line cards, while significantly improving power efficiencies of modular systems.

Figure 3. Cisco Silicon One P100 vs. competition

Fixed box advantages

Because we can use a single piece of silicon to create a 19.2 Tbps, 24x800G, or 48x400G router we can drive a level of efficiency unheard of in the industry today. The next best piece of routing silicon on the market tops out at 7.2 Tbps.

This means that you need to use between six and 12 devices to build an equivalent system. This difference means Cisco Silicon One enables a smaller, lower latency, more power-efficient router at the system level.

Figure 4. Cisco Silicon One P100 fixed box advantage

Modular line card advantages

Modular systems are built with multiple pieces of silicon. Based on limitations on the faceplate, Printed Circuit Board (PCB), optics form factors, silicon, and orthogonal connector densities, most system vendors produce 36x400G line cards with customer-facing 14.4 Tbps of bandwidth.

Using our advanced architecture, coupled with 100G PAM4 Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) technology, Cisco Silicon One P100 enables line cards to push through previous limitations in front panel optics, PCB technologies, and orthogonal connectors, resulting in line card hardware that’s two times higher bandwidth than other modular line cards. When combined with our 25.6 Tbps fabric element, the Cisco Silicon One G100 is 2.6 times higher bandwidth than other fabric elements, so customers can build modular routers that are up to three times higher bandwidth.

Table 1. Cisco Silicon One P100 modular system bandwidth

The bandwidth increase coupled with the power efficiency of Cisco Silicon One drives significant power efficiency gains compared to all other routing silicon in the market.

Figure 5. Cisco Silicon One P100 modular line card advantage

Building the future of the internet

Cisco Silicon One P100 enables the highest bandwidth and most efficient fixed box routers based on a single piece of silicon. It also enables the highest bandwidth modular line cards that are two times higher bandwidth than what can be built with our competitors’ silicon.

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading

Plug & Play (PnP) enables faster onboarding of new offices

Most IT engineers can agree that device provisioning for new offices is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone. Fortunately, our Cisco IT Customer Zero team—which tries out the latest Cisco solutions and integrations to prove value and share experiences—has discovered that it doesn’t need to be that way.

By leveraging the Plug & Play (PnP) capability in Cisco DNA Center, we’ve managed to slash provisioning time by over 50%, while improving the engineer/user experience, reducing configuration issues, and enhancing security.

Prior to PnP, provisioning new offices was tedious and error-prone

Before PnP, our process was manual and slow, with a high risk of producing errors. In the weeks before we set up a switch, engineers had to scour a 501-page playbook to find the right configuration for the device model and office size. They would then travel to the office and paste in the appropriate code snippets via the command-line interface (CLI).

During this process, engineers could easily type an incorrect character or miss a line/s of code. These types of mistakes were responsible for the vast majority of Day-1 problems. The process also required engineers to remain for Day-1 support.

PnP provides the ability to automate onboarding, eliminating errors and saving time

Today, Cisco DNA Center’s PnP capability allows us to onboard new sites much faster by automating the onboarding of devices and the configuration of underlay routing (Figure 1). Switches automatically connect to Cisco DNA Center and retrieve the correct template, based on their serial number and tags. Engineers no longer have to engage in the time-consuming activity of searching through the playbook for the right configuration. PnP also reduces the need to type command-line instructions and cut-and-paste blocks of code. We are now able to standardize our configuration with the use of templates and version control. Instead of using Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheets, we can create templates that are used across multiple devices with the concept of variables allowing us to be adaptable to each device using templates and tags, saving time and ensuring compliance. Finally, with PnP, engineers no longer need to go on-site for Day-1 support.

Figure 1: Day-0 provisioning with PnP

PnP enables zero-touch device provisioning – ensuring simplicity, security, and consistency:

◉ Simplicity: When the device boots up for the first time, it automatically reaches out to the PnP Connect Cloud, then is redirected to Cisco DNA Center. From there, we can easily push the required Day-0 and Day-1 configs as well as the software images to the device—lowering the risk of an accidental input.

◉ Security: The device securely connects to the PnP cloud via https and is verified and redirected using its product ID and serial number.

◉ Consistency: This process enables a consistent workflow across all platforms— switches, routers, and wireless LAN controllers—regardless of the number of devices that need to be staged.

The Cisco IT Customer Zero team recently conducted a detailed value analysis to quantify the benefits of Cisco DNA Center PnP (Figure 2). Here is what the Customer Zero team found:

◉ Significant time savings: PnP cut the provisioning time of wireless controllers by 54 percent—from 130 minutes using the manual approach, to 60 minutes using Cisco DNA Center with PnP. Similarly, PnP reduced onboarding time for Cisco Catalyst 9300/9400 switches by 43 percent—from 180 minutes manually to 77 minutes with PnP.

◉ Enhanced NetOps experience: Because PnP does not require actual monitoring during device provisioning, only 45 percent of the provisioning process requires “active engineering time.” As a result, the experience is less tedious and stressful for network engineers.

◉ Better end-user experience: By automating initial provisioning and underlay routing configurations, PnP ensures faster site readiness and seamless user onboarding.

◉ Improved security: PnP enables end-to-end security, from Cisco DNA Center to network devices, from Day-0 to Day-N, with no physical access required.

Figure 2. Key findings: Cisco DNA Center Plug & Play benefits

The Cisco Customer Zero team is committed to exploring other ways that Cisco DNA Center PnP can further drive value by leveraging automation to fuel greater efficiency, better user experiences, and improved security. We are working towards initiatives such as configuration management across multiple Cisco DNA Centers and other automated use cases. Stay tuned…

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading

The Future of Broadcast: The All-IP Olympics

This summer, we witnessed the future of broadcasting, and it wasn’t the first time the Olympics were involved. When the Games were first held in Tokyo in 1964, it made history for being the first live televised broadcast. Fifty-seven years later, with the help of 6,700 pieces of Cisco equipment, NBC Olympics was able to deliver more than 7,000 hours of coverage across multiple platforms. The ingenuity behind the scenes was Cisco helping power the first all-IP production in the host city for NBC Olympics’ coverage of the Games.

IP networking is a proven and robust technology, as evidenced by the IP-based enterprise networks that support so many businesses and organizations. The tremendous benefit of IP is that it enables new workflows that simply aren’t possible with legacy video technology. These new workflows enable broadcasters to fundamentally transform how they create and deliver content while lowering their operating expenses. And they can do this without negatively impacting the reliability or real-time delivery of content.

Improving Capabilities & Visibility

Consider a workflow like distributed production (see Figure 1). Traditionally, all participants in a live broadcast, from those being filmed to those doing the filming, had to be in the same location. With distributed production, each group can be in its own location. A host or commentator could be on one continent while athletes are on another, and the production team is yet again somewhere else. This allows for a lighter onsite crew and for production teams to work in their home production studios with full access to all of their usual tools and equipment.

Figure 1: A distributed production workflow allows production, participants, and commentators to be located anywhere in the world.

This was truer than ever for NBC Olympics because of COVID-19. Production was split between crews in Tokyo and employees back at NBC Olympics’ studios in Stamford, New York, Englewood Cliffs, Miami, and Sky Sports in the UK. There was increased importance on being able to send content back to the video team for editing and post-production before being distributed. Reliability, always important, was even more vital due to the scale of these Games.

Delivering Live Production

To deliver live production, the IP network at the IBC had to guarantee reliable transport of uncompressed video (SMPTE 2110). Cisco’s Nexus 9000 switches, deployed in a hybrid spine-leaf network, made this possible running with Cisco’s innovative Non-Blocking Multicast (NBM) technology. NBM provides end-to-end bandwidth guarantees for all multicast flows without relying on the traditional “equal cost, multipath-based” load balancing of flow. The flexibility of IP ensured that all flows within the IBC were reliable while meeting the capacity demands. Along with NBM, the Nexus 9000 switches distributed timing at scale using Precision Time Protocol (PTP). This ensured all endpoints were always in sync with nanosecond precision.

In addition, Cisco Nexus 9000 switches powered by Cisco’s Cloud scale ASICs, provided granular visibility into critical aspects of the network, including tracking the bitrate of every multicast flow and following flow paths as signals travelled through the network and streaming all of this information real-time using software and hardware telemetry to Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Flow analytics track the bitrate of every single flow in the network.

Simplification and automation were critical given the live nature of the Olympics. There wasn’t time for a tech to log into a switch and scan a session log to figure out an issue. Using the Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) gave NBC Olympics a single pane of glass approach to network management. Combined with the granular visibility of Cisco Nexus 9000 switches (see Figures 3 and 4), NDFC provided real-time insights into network performance, all the way to the application level. This enables NBC Olympics to identify and resolve issues before they became problems that can impact the quality of broadcasting.

Figure 3: The Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides flow information.

Figure 4: Monitoring precision time protocol performance on Cisco Nexus 9000 switches.

In addition to increasing reliability and simplifying management, NBC Olympics also recognized substantial operational savings with an all-IP distributed production approach. While COVID-19 necessitated a reduced crew on the ground in Tokyo, the technology enabled teams in different countries or regions to do their work from their home base.

The flexibility of all-IP production also enables network and production investment to be used in different events around the world. This reduces the overall carbon footprint of the entire industry and create long-term operational savings while optimizing workflows.

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading

Secure and Simplify Your Programmable Edge and Industrial Sensors

The Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard provides operations teams with a centralized, cloud-based dashboard to securely deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot device connectivity. Using this secure connectivity as a foundation, that same dashboard then enables you to extract, transform, govern and deliver data from IoT edge devices to the cloud with Cisco Edge Intelligence, install and manage your containerized edge applications and to deploy a broad range of industrial IoT sensors with Cisco Industrial Asset Vision.

Once your solution is in place, or as part of your solution development process, IoT Operations Dashboard enables you to securely and simply access remote connected equipment and to monitor its connectivity status, using nothing more than your browser.  This simplifies maintenance, solution development and updates, and ensures business continuity without the need for frequent and costly truck rolls to remote sites and locations.

With IoT Operations Dashboard, scaling up is straightforward.  Using the cloud-based dashboard, Cisco Industrial Routers and Gateways can be zero-touch provisioned at remote sites, and automatically configured with proven solution templates and configurations, helping you to streamline configuration of your devices, and reduce errors. You can then deploy your industrial IoT solutions, applications and sensors using that same dashboard. Once in operation, Dashboard provides an Operations Technology (OT) focused user experience and is simple and easy to use. Directly from the browser-based dashboard you can see map-based views of your deployments, equipment status, sensor data, events and alerts, which greatly simplifies monitoring and gaining insights into your operations.

Operations Dashboard offers a rich set of capabilities for developers and systems integrators, as well as custom solutions. And you can start right now on DevNet! The new DevNet IoT Operations Dashboard sandbox includes components such as Edge Device Manager (EDM) and Industrial Asset Vision, and we also offer an IoT Cisco Edge Intelligence (EI) sandbox.

Create templates and test remote access with the Edge Device Manager Sandbox

Custom forms called eCVDs allow you to configure Cisco Industrial Routers and Gateways to meet the exact needs of your solution. Use predefined eCVD configuration forms to leverage Cisco-provided zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) and best security practices. These can then be easily customized using the open-source Freemarker template language on which they are based.  This makes it straightforward for you to create a custom configuration form which is specific to your solution with ZTP, security and solution-specific configuration options and in-form guidance.

Using the built-in Secure Equipment Access (SEA) feature of IoT Operations Dashboard, you can then use RDP, VNC, SSH or HTTP/S to securely access remote connected equipment using just the dashboard and your browser.  SEA provides this ability for simple and secure remote access even if you are in a different organization and network to your customer’s solution, for example as a solution developer or equipment vendor.  This greatly simplifies solution development, especially for those real-world proof-of-concepts and in-field development and update activities that are often so challenging and time consuming.

Reserve our all-new EDM sandbox today for access to a real Cisco IR1101 and your own IoT Operations Dashboard organization! Test on-boarding, deploy applications, and connect via the dashboard to the Linux DevBox without any VPN configuration.

Extract all your IoT sensor data via MQTT with Industrial Asset Vision

Cisco Industrial Asset Vision (IAV) provides a complete full-stack solution that includes all hardware and software components, pre-integrated and delivered as a cloud SaaS offer. IAV includes an end-user dashboard application, network management tools, LoRaWAN network devices, and Cisco industrial sensors for collecting environmental and GPS location data.

Cisco IAV exposes APIs through which global independent software vendors (ISVs) and applications developers can integrate with systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), service management, manufacturing execution systems, and analytics. Asset and sensor information can also be published to 3rd party data brokers via MQTT and to Azure IoT Hub.

Industrial Asset Vision – IoT Operations Dashboard Documentation

Simplify IoT Edge-to-Multi-Cloud Data Flow with Cisco Edge Intelligence

As part of IoT Operations Dashboard, the IoT data orchestration software, Cisco Edge Intelligence, connects assets at the edge to multi-cloud application destinations in a very easy way for the user and can even extend its functionality with a transformation engine at the edge.

Source: cisco.com

Continue reading