Cisco CCIE Security 350-701 – Cisco DNA Center Part 2

2. DNA Center Appliance

This video will try to understand some information about the DNA appliance. DNA center appliance now. Cisco DNA Center appliance available as a physical appliance. Now, physical appliance in the sense it is like a box seem like your router or a switch, a physical chassis which can be inserted inside the rack. And this particular device is already have a pre loaded image that is like a software which is installed so that you can log in and you can manage the devices.

So when you buy a DNS Center, probably you will get this appliance in the form of box and also it has the software preloaded inside the box. Now when you are deploying this DNS Center, you can deploy this either in the standalone mode or in the cluster mode. Now the difference is like the standalone mode means it is more like a single host. A single host. Just you have one DNS Center appliance and that is doing all the functions of the DNA center and this is more like more preferable especially when you are using for testing for initial testing kind of scenarios or if you’re using some kind of small environments probably this is something recommended means you can use it. But then if you’re using as a single host then also there is a single point of failure. So that’s the reason in the production scenarios mostly you go with something called cluster mode and the cluster mode we can have maximum of three DNA centers.

So three DNA centers sharing the services, sharing the data among the three host and this is going to provide you something called high availability so that if any of the DNS Center fails, you still have some kind of backup. So it’s like always available and also provide you some kind of better performance. So in terms of performance also it will increase the performance on your network as well. So again, as I said, when you buy the DNS Center you’ll get a physical appliance boss. Now probably there are three different models you can choose from depending upon the requirement like simply how large your network is. That is one form factor you will go with while you are deciding which DNS Center appliance is going to suit my requirements and probably how large your network is.

Again the number of devices probably you want to manage. So these are the form factors in deciding. Now, as I said, there are three models. So the first model is more like an entry level model which is probably this DNS Center appliance run on Cisco UCS server. M five series, that is your second generation runs on MPI series. So probably there are some M Four series. Also the first generation in terms of size, the performance specifications they both are saying.

So it can be coming in M four or M five, probably the newer ones. The second generation comes in MPI series here service the processing capabilities. You can see course will be different. So this is more applicable for small size or entry level organizations. And this is more applicable for mid size, and this is for the large organizations. Now, depending upon the number of devices, the capability as I said, so the entry level is going to you can manage something around 1000 devices with somewhere around 4000 access points and 20,000 clients.

3. DNA Center- What can do – PART 1

Going to explain you what are the options you can do. There are plenty of things you can do. I’m going to list out those options and I’ll show you in the DNS Center where exactly this option reside. So the first thing before I go ahead, if you try to see in the previous I have already discussed about the Cisco DevNet sandboxes and for DNS Center I’m going to use this one always on option right now to show the options here. So when you click on this, it is going to load the particular topology and access to the DNS Center. You can click on this URL and access. So already I do have access. So this is something how you do here. But whereas if you are doing in the real production networks, probably the DNS Center, you do have an IP address. So what you’ll be doing is you’re going to type in the IP address using some Http and then type in the IP address and then you will be entering some login username and the password, just like we are entering here. This one.

So this is like the replacement and this username and the password you’ll be using whatever you have created during the installation process. Okay, so you need to enter your username and the password, whatever you have used at the time of logging. Again, so whatever the password you have created at the time of installation. So there’s a separate installation steps might be present with a command line. You have to do that. You can refer some DevNet DNS Center materials or videos. You will find them. So once your DNS Center device is ready, now you can access. So you can see here, I’m accessing via this option. Now this is your home page. Now in the home page you will find three different options. Like the first one is Network snapshot and then you have network configuration tab. And the third one is like tools. So most of the options reside here. So we’ll be using these options to move. Now the network snapshot is more like assurance option where it is going to display the number of sites, devices and the profiles being applied, the images used, the DNA licensed devices options. So all this you’ll find here. And likewise if you want to make any kind of changes, we go to the network configuration tab here. And again, even you have some specific tools where you can jump in directly from this option instead of going from here. So at the end, again, either you use option here or here.

They both are same. Okay, so let’s see one by one, what are the things we can do with the Cisco DNA Center. So the first one starting with something called we can discover your network devices. Now discovery is nothing, but you can scan the devices in your network and send those discover devices to the inventory list. Like if you go to the DNS Center home page you will find an option in the tools. If you scroll down, you have an option something called Discovery. And what this discovery option is going to do is it will use some kind of discovery tools like you can see here, discovery is enabled and it is going to display the discover devices. And I clicked on see the discoveries you can see here. These are the different discovery options, what you have and this discoveries, how many devices have been discovered or identified in your network and those device details and these device details are automatically added to the inventory list.

Again, inventory list is like the list where your device information will present. I’ll be coming to that. Now here you cannot make any kind of discoveries because as this lab is the always on read only lab, you cannot make any changes. But if you are reserving the DNS Center labs using the reserve option, you can find an option called add a new discovery and you can create a new discovery also to discover your devices in your network. So let’s say I have some hundred devices in your network. Probably you have just connected new devices in your network and you want these devices to be identified. Now, what I can do is I can run this discovery option and with the help of discovery option we use CDP option or I can define the IP range. Also there are different options in that.

Now based on that, it’s going to identify the device and add those devices into the inventor list. That’s what discovery option is about, identifying your devices and adding them to the inventory list. And once the devices are added to the inventory list now with the help of DNS Center, we can manage those inventory list. With this inventory I can retrieve the information about my devices present in our network like what is the IP address, what is the Mac address and then where the network attachment point are about the complete devices inside your database.

So you can find these options. If you go to the home page, probably in the home page again you have this option inside the tools you will have something called Inventory option. So you can either go to the tools if you don’t find this option here, means I don’t have access to that option here. So if you don’t have an option on the home page, but still you can go to the provision and then you can go to the devices and you click on this device says Inventory. Now here you can see all the list of devices which are being identified. You can see all the details here, like what is a family, what type of device it is, where exactly the particular device, on which side it is present and the reachability status, the Mac address information and the device role like whether it is an access level or distribution level. Device. The image is used and you can see if you scroll down, there is a lot of information you can find here and what is the device series as well and what is the platform using all those details. So the job of the inventory is inventory list is going to, again, whatever the device is discovered, it is going to do some kind of polling for every 25 minutes, which is the default, where it is going to check the availability of those devices, just like ensuring that these devices exist or not.

And you can see these devices based on specific sites. If you, if you select a specific site and it will show you what are the devices present on that particular site. So whenever you make any changes automatically these are updated. Now this is one option and apart from that it also helps you to manage the software images. Now inside the DNS Center we do have some specific option the name I think it is something called image respiratory that is actual tab or the option you will find in the DNS Center. Now in this image respiratory it is going to store all the software images like let’s say we got some routers and switches. The iOS images, it will be stored like image type, image version and what we can do is we can also import a new image. We can use the image details as well as we can delete the software images. Now you can find this option probably inside the design, if you go to inside the design and then there is something called image respiratory.

Now this image respiratory is going to display the different family of devices and the image used and what I can do is I can provision a specific image to specific platforms like I can designate a specific image to specific devices in the network even there is an option, something called golden images. Now, the golden images are like the valid image which is designated for specific platform. Like, let’s say I have a 4300 router and I want to designate some image XYZ, image 15 six, and I want to assign this as a golden image, which means now, all the platforms, the specific platforms, the DNS center will ensure that they all uses this golden image. And in case if they are not using let’s say there are some platforms, some devices which are not using this image. So probably we can schedule automatic kind of upgrade to this particular golden image or you can do it manually as well and after it will dynamically update the software, it will also report back whether that particular image update has been successful or not in the results of that. So most of the image related options we do here manage software images.

Now, apart from that, with DNS Center you can also display your network topology. Displaying network topology means, let’s say if I go to my DNS Center and let’s go to the tools and here you can find the topology tab. So when you click on that it is going to display the graphical view of your network. So the DNA is going to discover the devices using the discovery option and probably the settings has been assigned in the inventory like the devices are listed in the inventory and now the DNA center is going to build the physical topology with a detailed device information. Like here you can see when I click on the specific sites on the left side you can see this is like global and your topology view how they are connected and of course you can also view in the in the form of map depending upon the locations you assign, the address you provide. And these are the specific sites. When you select the specific sites it will show you the devices present in that specific size and again in that specific site you can have something like building details, the building and then specific floor also you can also view the floor details as well something like detail information. And when you click on that device again you will get more information about on the individual devices. And if I click on the link, probably that link it is going to provide you the link information also like what device it is connected and what is the interface and the IP address those information also it is going to provide. Now additionally you have an option of like filter where you can display only the VRF specific VRF.

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