Catalyst Center Assurance Essentials

Oh good morning, everyone. So this session we have started the recording. This recording will be available. This is what I wanted to let everyone.00:00Don't know.00:20For the start. Welcome to Catalyst Center Assurance essentials session. This is the very 1st session of the series that we have for you. What we will learn today is about optimizing the network visibility and the operations workflow.00:20Today we have our experts, Akshay Tavan and Vani. They will take you through this session's best practices. Akshay is a customer success specialist on Cisco Enterprise Network in APJC and Asian region. He is a CCNP wireless certified. He has an overall experience of ten years in enterpris.00:40Networking. In his past years, Akshay was working on as network analyst and as a project implementation engineer for several customers in health, education, enterprise, banking, and government sector. His current technical focus is on the Cisco catalyst center, software defined access.01:01Cisco Meraki and Cisco Spaces.01:21We have our demo specialist Vijay here. Vijay is also a customer success specialist. He works for enterprise networking in the APJC region. He has totaled twelve years of experience in routing, switching, wireless, and SD WAN technologies at various stages of customer engagement.01:24He mainly worked into the design and implementation of wired wireless enterprise infrastructure in earlier years. His current technical focus is on, cisco's catalyst center and software defined access. Now having said that, we have.01:43Wonderful presenters here. Just couple of logistic items here. During today's session you will have an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the Catalyst Center assurance topic. So just put in your questions into Q and A panel which you can find in the three.menu that you have on the right.01:59Side of your question of your screen. Now you can also use the hand icon to raise your hand if you face any difficulty related to audio and then one of our panelists will reach to you.02:19We do ask to lower your hand when the questions are answered or when the issue is resolved for you. For any unanswered question, there will be a Q and A, followed by today's presentation. Quick heads up team.02:32This call, we have presentation and demo for the assurance features, but there will be a short Q and A session that will be happening as well. Thank you. With this let me.02:47Let me share it with Akshay. Akshay, please go ahead stated us. Hey, hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you Madhura for the quick introduction. Let me just quickly share my screen here. Just give me 1 min.03:04Okay, let me know if my screen is visible yeah as yeah we can see your screen.03:24That is not something that I wanted to show, but yeah, let's just give me a moment here yeah Hopefully it comes up now yeah great so good morning, good afternoon everyone from wherever you guys are joining, welcome to the session. Before we start off, we would quickly like.03:41To understand the audience 1st 1st of all, like how many of you are already using catalyst center?04:01How many are kind of evaluating it, right? Or how many of you are actually planning to deploy it in the future, right? So if you can just put it in the chat section with a thumbs up, hands up, a quick yes, NO in the coming section as well, that'd be wonderful. We'll also start on with a quick introduction of Cisco I.04:09IQ. So currently as you manage your network infrastructure, you're likely generating massive amounts of data every single day, but data alone is not enough, right? So you need intelligence on top of it. That is exactly where Cisco IQ comes in.04:29Okay, Cisco IQ is our dedicated digital hub designed to turn your network data into clear actionable insights. Think of it as a personalized advisor for your Cisco environment. So instead of guessing where to optimize, Cisco IQ provides you with the roadmap. It helps you bench.04:48Mark your current performance, identify specific organization opportunities and apply industry proven best practices all in one centralized dashboard. Whether you're looking to improve network stability, reduce operational friction or simply get more value out of your existing investments. We.05:08Are planning for a few sessions in in some time on Cisco IQ as well, you should be getting the invites for the same. Now, without wasting further time, let us quickly jump into what.05:28The catalyst center assurances, right? So at a high level, it's cisco's operational intelligence engine inside the catalyst center that makes the assurance module its name. It continuously collects telemetry from across your network, but.05:44Collecting telemetry isn't the impressive part, ok? The real value comes from correlation. So instead of looking at your switches, wireless applications, clients or and and network services independently, assurance brings everything together into a single operational context. That means when something goes wrong.06:01You're NO longer investigating ten different dashboards. You're following one connected story.06:21Was it an application issue, a wireless roaming issue, a DHCP delay, a DNS response problem, a switch configuration, assurance helps narrow that down automatically, right? So, this slide here summarizes it it in a bigger picture. So catalyst center is in.06:26Simply an automation platform as well, right? It's designed to improve operations across four major areas. 1st visibility.06:46Wherein comes your assurance. So you can't troubleshoot what you can't see. Second part of catalyst center is automation, so reducing repetitive operational work while maintaining consistency. 3rd part is the security, Integrating with technologies like ICE to strengthen in point visibility and policy enforcement, and finally.06:54So using AI driven analytics to identify issues faster and recommend remediations. One important point that I'd like to emphasize here is.07:14These capabilities don't exist independently, so our automation feeds assurance, assurance validates automation, telemetry improves the insights, insights, improve future automation. So everything works together on one operational cycle. Now.07:25Catalyst center, as I mentioned earlier, right? So, it, there are four major parts to it. Netops sec ops, DevOps, AI ops, as we discussed earlier. It also consists of four.07:45Major pillars, right? So catalyst center, as I mentioned continuously collects information from numerous sources across the network. So that includes your SNMP, syslog, netflow, CLI, DHCP, DNS, your wireless controllers, triple AAA application telemetry, and many others. So instead of.08:00Analyzing each source independently Catalyst Center correlates all of this information together.08:20Think of it like putting together pieces of a puzzle. So one log message may not tell you much. One client event may not tell you much. One wireless event may not tell you much, right? But when they're all connected together, the root cause becomes much easier to be identified, right? So after this correlation, we have machine learning, so.08:26Machine learning helps establish normal behavior from your environment. So that means instead of generating thousands of unnecessary alerts, assurance learns what, what, what.08:47Normal looks like and highlights meaningful deviations on basis of that. And finally, we have guided remediation as well. So not only telling you what happened, but also suggesting where to begin fixing this issue, right? And that's what significantly reduces the troubleshooting time. So you can, you can simply imagine.08:59Engine receiving an alert that says client failed authentication. Now compare that with.09:19Client failed authentication because the radius server response exceeded the baseline by say 4 s 5 s after a DHCP renewal, right? So which one would you, would you rather troubleshoot, right? My favorite part is instead of playing detective with 20.09:26Log files. Catalyst center has already interviewed all the witnesses before you arrive. Now, now that we understand these pillars, let's dive a little deeper into the architecture of of what makes all of this possible, right? So looking at the DNA centers.09:46Architecture itself. We'll start from bottom to top, at the bottom we have our network, right? It comprises of your switches, routers, wlcs as in your wireless LAN controllers, access points, and our shared services like dhcpis, Cisco speed.10:06Now, all that information is being sent to Cisco Catalyst Center.10:27Right, and in Catalyst Center, we have different namespaces with different responsibilities, right? So let's focus on Cisco Catalyst assurance or the network data platform for now. Now, all of this information that is being sent from your devices to catalyst center and anything related to assurance.10:32Tolerance is going to be consumed by the network data platform namespace, which we in short call it as NDP. Now, so whether it is traps, GRPC for intelligent packet captures, NetFlow data for application experience or location analytics for say your Cisco spaces, everything is consumed by this NDP.10:52Now once we get that information, it is going to be processed, right? So there are two engines that will process this, this data, the on prem engine that you see on your right, you can see that we have the cloud based machine learning engine.11:11So if there is many wireless, there are many wireless information and you enable this engine, it will send, it will be sent to that cloud based engine. We will go through all the details of how to enable it in in our next session, which is I think scheduled on 12th or 13th of this month.11:27You should be getting an invite for the same as well, which will kind of help you engage and look at what are the different advanced assurance capabilities that we offer. Now, once the ML based engine or cloud based ML engine, processes the data, it will send back that information to the catalyst.11:48So everything that we have done in the catalyst center, whether it is on prem or cloud based, it will be shown to you in the catalyst centers assurance user interface as well. So you do not need to care about everything that has happened underneath. The only thing you have to care about is what is the information that we're showing you on the user interface that you.12:08Already manages and adjusted adjusted for you. So this is where you need to put your eyes on, yeah?12:27Now let's look at telemetry. We've been talking about telemetry, telemetry telemetry, right? So, this slide or this context basically explains one of the biggest shifts in the modern network monitoring. So traditionally management.12:34Platforms relied heavily on polling technologies like SNMP, right? The management system would periodically ask every device, how are you doing? The device would answer, then the system would wait before asking again, that approach worked for many years. However, today's enterprise networks are moving much faster. Problem.12:52You can appear and disappear between polling intervals, right? Streaming telemetry changes the model completely.13:12Instead of waiting to be asked, devices proactively send important operational data as soon as changes occur. So this provides several advantages like lower CPU utilization on the devices, much faster visibility.13:19Near real time notifications and significantly better context for troubleshooting. So rather than waiting several minutes to discover a problem, assurance can begin analyzing it almost immediately, right? Polling is a bit like checking your front door every 5 min to see if someone has.13:35Where in streaming telemetry is like the doorbell telling you ok I'm arrived rates.13:55Now, let's look at some of the prerequisites here, right? So as, as I mentioned, so before enabling or before going into assurance, we 1st need to understand a few prerequisites. Vijay will also show you a few of those in the upcoming demo. The 1st is to ensure that.13:59All the managed devices are supported by the catalyst centers release that you're running, right? So supported hardware is only part of the equation. Supported software versions are equally important because many assurance capabilities rely on telemetry features introduced in newer or upcoming releases, right? 2nd.14:19Use it is connectivity.14:39Catalyst Center needs the appropriate ports and protocols available to communicate with your network devices. If telemetry can't reach catalyst center, assurance obviously cannot analyze it, right? And the final optional recommendation that you can see here is integrating it with Cisco right.14:41Although assurance works without ICE, integrated and identity information provides significantly richer context when troubleshooting client related issues. A little preparation here saves a lot of troubleshooting later, yeah. One quick tip or you can say.15:02A quick recommendation, we always give our customers is to validate software compatibility before deployment rather than discovering unsupported devices halfway through the implementation. We should be sharing the compatibility matrix in the chat section as well in a bit, yeah?15:20Now let's look at some of these important aspects. 1st being device controllability, which is often misunderstood. So let's clarify on, on what it actually does, right? So when enabled your catalyst center is allowed to push certain configurations to manage device.15:40Or to managed devices that enable telemetry collection and operational visibility. Without these configurations, your catalyst center loses access to some of the information required for assurance. That doesn't necessarily mean the platform stops working.16:01Right? It simply means some operational insights become unavailable. Recent catalyst center releases provide much more flexibility in this term or or in this aspect. E.g., administrators can choose whether IP address, IP device tracking should be enabled while still allowing other.16:18Telemetry related configurations to be applied. So this gives you all greater control over how they, how, how you kind of adopt to these assurance capabilities, right? Has anyone have here ever enabled monitoring only to discover?16:39Later that a critical telemetry wasn't actually being collected. So this is usually one of the 1st places we recommend it. We, we kind of recommend checking, right? Now with the prerequisites complete, let's walk through the deployment process itself, right? The deployment process is actually very straightforward.16:55When, when broken into logical steps.17:15The 1st step obviously is install your catalyst center. Second would be to configure the necessary system settings such as collectors and credentials. Next comes device discovery, right? Catalyst center can discover use devices using IP addresses, IP ranges, C CDP LLDP depending on your environment.17:19Now, once all these devices or whatever device you want to get discovered or discovered, they're added into the inventory page, right? So after that you kind of start creating your site hierarchy. This is an extremely important step because many assurance.17:39Dashboards rely on accurate location information, right? Finally, assign devices to their respective sites. Once those steps are complete, devices are ready to begin sending telemetry for assurance. Although the the workflow appears linear.17:56Many back background tasks happen automatically making deployment much simpler than people expect, right? It's a little, it's it's like assembling furniture. So if you skip step two.18:15Because it looks optional, you'll probably spend the next 2 h wondering why there's one screw leftover, right? So, that brings me to another question that we usually get, which is assigning the site versus provisioning, right?18:30We we often get asked whether devices must be fully provisioned before assurance works. The answer is NO. Provisioning and assurance are related yes, but they are not the same thing. For assurance, the critical requirement is that your devices are discovered, managed, and assigned.18:49Correctly within the site hierarchy. This, this allows the telemetry profiles to be associated with those devices and enables location based reporting.19:10In other words, don't think of assurance as waiting until automation is complete. You can begin gaining operational visibility much earlier in your deployment journey, ok? So with that, let me quickly bring up and share my access with Vijay.19:19Vijay, the floor is yours. Hope my screen is visible. So the very 1st thing, right? I would like to start with the catalyst centers compatibility metrics. I think in order to use the, any of the features in the catalyst centers, right? So you must 1st of all ensures that your device is compatible with the.19:39Listen, so here this is the compatibility metrics and even I will just share this link on the chat as well later. So you must follow this compatibility metrics and check it out what are the devices, switches which are compatible, what are the software versions it's compatible. So that's the very 1st checks we should do before utilizing any.19:59Of the features in the catalyst centers.20:19And now, let me bring the screen to the catalyst centers and this is my home screen of the catalyst centers and where 1st of all, I would like to show you the version which I'm using in the catalyst centers that is 23711, and it is going to give you the visibility of.20:21The homepage like what is assurance summary, how much your network devices are in the healthy stage, critical trends and insights, all those other small small snapshot which is going to give you the understanding basically what is happening on the network perspective, right? So.20:41The very 1st thing from the assurance perspective, right? I would like to start with the prerequisites. So the 1st prerequisites I would go with the system under the settings page and there you will see that we have a lot of settings are there on the left hand side, right? And on the left side, if you go to this device control.20:56That's the very 1st thing, I think it should be enabled on the catalyst center. Basically what it does, it's.21:17It's basically giving the permissions to the catalyst centers to make changes on our network devices so that in order to manage your network devices in a proper way. So that's the functionality basically this, this, this features is going to give it out. So once we enable it out, right, this feature is it's.21:26By default enabled itself on on the catalyst centers, but you must ensure that the settings is enabled so that it's making the permissions that you can configure the SNMP credentials, netconf credentials, right? Wired collections data, wireless collections data, SNMP trap servers, so all those, all those settings are of the telemetry.21:45Okay that can be configured on your network devices using the catalyst center. So this is the very 1st checks it's going to be done.22:05Now, let me go to the site hierarchy. The next things, right? What we recommend for the customers to do it out, that's we we have to go to this design and network hierarchy. We should create this page very effectively, the network hierarchy. So.22:12The catalyst centers majorly supports the area building and floor level network hierarchy. So you can just create it out area I think likewise if you see right if it's created on one of it, a lot of site hierarchies are created here. So I'm just giving you an example right now, I have this Bangalore ***.22:29An area where I can create the building and you can give the building name, give the address of this building, and its latitude, longitude, it's automatically will be taken, click on add, you will see that it's going to, I mean locate on the map as well. So.22:49The building and inside that you can create the floor plan. So that's the very 1st steps for the for catalyst centers, assurance features or any features you have to utilize. This is the very prime step we have to configure on the catalyst center. So once that is done, right, your site hierarchy is done, the next step for the assurance features that you should go.23:05Go to the settings page and here you can see we have a lot of tabs out there on this network settings table, right? So you can see one is this global hierarchy and under the global you can see whatever the site hierarchy we have created, it's it's going to come it up. So.23:25And this is a very prime step you should see and so these are the settings majorly whenever you are going to do a provisioning step on the catalyst centers or whatever the configurations, the global configurations, right, that is the requirement for every network devices. It's, it's, it can be configured on this page and on the provisioning step.23:41All those configurations will be written by the catalyst centers and pushed to your network devices. So that's the that's the page will be used for your new new network devices provisioning step.24:01But for the assurance perspective, right? I'm I'm not going to discuss on the discovery process, but, for I mean for the discovery process, right? For this pages, basically you need a credentials, right? The CLI and SNMP credentials that is mandatory to run the discovery process. So this this is going to be configured on.24:14This page, you can go to this managed credentials and add the credentials, the CLA credentials as well as SNMP credentials for discovering any of the network devices. So that's, that's the, that's 2nd page is there for the discovery process, but for the assurance side the telemetry which we have discussed, let me just show you 1 min.24:34So if you see on the 3rd four 5th one tab, right, this is the telemetry settings. So here by default settings are already enabled, but if you want to control the settings like some of the telemetry, you don't want to push it out for your network devices. You don't want the catalyst centers to collect those logs, you can enable and disable those telemetry.24:54Settings. So here you can see we have SNMP traps, syslog, application visibility, wired endpoint data collections. It is enabled by default, so whenever we are assigning the devices to a particular sites, right? So all those telemetry settings which you are seeing on this page, that will be pushed to your network devices. So all the configurations that.25:14Things will be pushed to your network devices. So now how how to push this telemetry settings? I think it's just an enablement here, but it's still not pushed to your network devices. So to push the telemetry settings, basically we have to assign the devices to your site. So to assign the devices, there are two ways. One is that either you can select the devices during the discovery.25:34Process itself, I mean, let me just show you in the tools, in the discovery process.25:54You will see there's a I mean, I'm just running one discovery workflow. There you will see that option itself is going to come. I'm just clicking one of the credentials, clicking on next.26:01It is taking time to load, let me rerun just a minute. So here you can see, right? This is a discovery page. It's going.26:37To come and suppose I am running the discovery.26:57I'm just giving one of the management IP address and I'm running this and there you can see once I click on this, so here, if you see right in the discovery process itself, we have a site assignment tab is there, right? So you can assign to this particular site, through this process inside the discovery process, so.27:05Once you assign the site, right? On this process itself, your telemetry settings are getting pushed to your network device, one way is that. Now I'm just closing this process. If suppose if you're not attaching the sites on this process, the discovery, your telemetry settings are still not pushed it out. So to push the telemetry settings, 2nd way, right? Once your device are getting discovered.27:25I'm just going into the provision inventory.27:45And if you just select one of the device and there's an option of provisioning and assign devices to a site. So once you assign the devices to the site, whatever the telemetry settings which you were seeing on the settings tab, it will be getting pushed to your network devices. So once you push the telemetry settings, you will see all the telemetry, I mean all the assurance tabs are going to be.27:52Come up. So in the assurance you can see the health view, which is going to give you the global snapshot.28:12And it's going to give you the, and I mean a view of your what's what's happening on your network, right? It's going to give you the telemetry informations, how much of your network devices are basically healthy, how much of your routers are healthy, how much your clients are healthy, and those healthy statuses going to be calculated by the different KPI.28:18Metrics for individual devices. So for your wireless, we have a different KPI metrics like RF, SNR, all those are the different KPI metrics for switches, there will be the different KPI metrics. So all those are the different different.28:38Visibility I think you can get it out the screenshot of of of your network devices, and even wired clients wireless clients, all those are the different percentage, you will get it out. And if you go down, you will get a quick snapshot how much of your network I mean, whatever the issues that are happening on the network, you will start getting the alerts as well in the top.28:52Issues dashboard. So this is the basically snapshot I mean after onboarding the devices in the 1st day itself, you will be getting all the view of of your network, how they are performing and what is happening to your network. So that's the power of assurance basically in the catalyst centers that is giving it out.29:12And we have other tabs like network, client, other tab. I will just quickly go to other tabs as well. Just a minute. I will just use some different catalyst centers so that we can see some traffic as well. Just a minute. I'm just clicking on this and if we go to this snapshot here.29:29You can see we we have a network graph as well. So, so basically it's going to give us the network summary, how my network devices performance are there. If you want to go back to the previous date, what was happened to the network? So catalyst center also collects the data till 30 days. So you can go back date as well, go back.29:49To the date and you can check the telemetry settings, what, I mean how your network performance was there and even we can also select per site wise if you want want the data per site wise, what was happening on this site, you want to see the data, how your network devices are performing on this site, you can select this particular site and see it. And if you, and here.30:09As I was saying, right? All the devices perspective we we have basically a scale. I mean, if you click on this it's going to define whether your routers are healthy or not. So I mean how the catalyst is calculating, so we have defined a scale from one to ten. And if your device score is lying between eight to ten, it means it's it's.30:29Fours are I mean that device is performing good and if it's lying on this three to seven, then it means it's on the fair state and if it's one to three then it's it's basically a poor state that your device is performing. So it is based on this scales, if it's it's going to define it out whether it's it's healthy or it's a poor stage and.30:49There's other other dashlets are also there that how much APs are up, how much I mean based I mean how many APs are up, AP distributions based on the interference, top APs, top APs by the client count, so all those are the different different dashlets, which is basically helping us to understand our network in a better way.31:10And if you go down here also it's going to, you have an option to see all the network devices which are in the poor state, which are in the fair state, and you can also filter it out based on your requirement what you and you can go inside and see the three 60 view, but I'm not going to cover those advanced features right now on this page, but just I want to.31:27Glimpse knowledge what is happening after pushing the telemetry, you will have all those telemetry informations based on the network devices. Similarly, like a network, we also have a client's page and under the clients page you can have a view how your clients are performing. We have a timetable graph suppose if there's any issues, you can go to that particular.31:48Timeframe and see it out what was happened and it's going to give you the snapshot that how much your wireless clients are healthy, how much your wired clients are healthy and you can see the client onboarding times, I mean like a network network network dashboard, right? Similarly for the client we have a snapshot, right? How your client.32:07This is connecting, which of your clients have a good RSI, you can go to the view details and you will have more details of those client which is having a poor performance and all. You you can go inside and check it out. But if you go I think.32:27You can have a more visibility on those dashlet as well. And likewise similarly for the client, we can also filter what all the wired clients are connected, what are the wireless clients are connected, which are on the poor stage and we we can filter it out based on our requirement, right? If we need it out some onboarding time perspective, we want to filter it out.32:41You can select that selected options and it will just give you the, what's the health score per client basis they are getting, what the trust scores and the client RSI, all those other different different views that you can get it out for the assurance.33:01So that's it for the 1st demo which I would like to cover it out. Now I would like to pass the ball back to my colleague actually. Yeah, now that we have covered how assurance works technically.33:18Let's talk about something that isn't always exciting but is absolutely critical, that is licensing. I know the moment someone says licensing, the energy in the room drops a little, but trust me spending a few minutes understanding it now can see view hours of troubleshooting later.33:35Catalyst center has an inbuilt tool called as license manager. This gives you a centralized way to monitor and manage your Cisco software entitlements. So instead of logging into multiple systems to check license status, you get one consolidated one.33:53This becomes especially valuable in large environments where you may have hundreds of even thousands of devices, right? So keeping a track of each device that is licensed, which ones are not or which ones are saying out of compliance and which licenses are nearing expiration manually simply doesn't.34:10Okay, right? So license manager helps automate much of that visibility so that your operations team can focus on running the network rather than chasing spreadsheets.34:29Let's be honest, most engineers would love to troubleshoot any routing loops or some major major issues, a lot more than troubleshooting licensing issues. The goal here is to make licensing almost invisible, right? So to make license manager work effectively.34:42There are a few prerequisites that we need to understand, right?35:01Before your catalyst center can manage licenses, there are a few prerequisites as I mentioned that should be in place, right? 1st, the user configuring the licensing means the appropriate administrative permission. So without the correct RBAC role based access control role, license manager simply won't be able to.35:06Performance tasks. Next, you'll need access to your Cisco account or smart account credentials, so this is what allows your catalyst center to register and synchronize license information.35:26Connectivity again is equally important. Catalyst center and your managed devices need to communicate with Cisco's licensing infrastructure or maybe an on premises CSSM deployment depending on your licensing model, right?35:38Finally, pay attention to the supported software versions as we discussed earlier as well. Smart licensing capabilities depend on the minimum ISXC versions. So verifying your software compatibility during deployment is always recommended. Think of these prerequisites as laying the foundation. So once they are in place license managed.35:54You can automate much of the operational overhead, ok? A quick question here to the team.36:14Or to all the attendees. How many of you still maintain a spreadsheet to track software licenses? No judgment. I've I've seen some very impressive spreadsheets over the years, but we would we would like to see a quick hands up or or a quick comment there in the comments section, yeah? With the prerequisites covered, I'll quickly move to how smart account.36:21Fits into the picture?36:41So, catalyst center integrates directly with Cisco smart accounts, so allowing organizations to manage licensing centrally. One useful capability is the ability to configure multiple smart accounts. Although only one can be designated as a primary account.36:43At at at at any given time.37:03But yeah, you can also associate a virtual account which is particularly useful for organizations managing different business use units or departments. Another helpful feature is automatic registration or auto registration of smart license enabled devices as they are added to the catalyst centers.37:05So this reduces manual work and helps ensure devices are licensed consistently from day one. The key message here is simplicity. So rather than registering devices one by one, catalyst center streamlines the process and provides centralized visibility.37:25We've seen customers onboard hundreds of switches during large campus deployments, automating smart account registration significantly reduce the administrative effort involved during the process and even after the process, right? Now let's look at how we, how we kind of register the.37:44Center itself.38:04Now, the important point that sometimes applies customers is that catalyst center itself is considered a smart enabled appliance, right? So registering the appliance with your smart account is highly recommended because it enables proper licensing across operations and simplifies the life cycle manner.38:06The, the, the platform supports registrations using direct or proxy modes depending on your network infrastructure. So if you're an organization kind of uses on premises CSSM deployments, there are some considerations to keep in mind as well. So it's always worth reviewing the deployment model before or yeah.38:26During planning as well. Ultimately, registering the appliance is a one time step that lays the groundwork for smooth licensing operations. It's a bit like registering your new smartphones.38:46It only takes a few minutes, but it unlocks a lot of functionality, right? Now let's look at some of the connection modes or rather the three connection modes that we have, right? So, it catalyst center supports several different connection.38:58Modes for smart licensing, giving organizations flexibility based on their security and operational requirements. The 1st option is direct connectivity where the platform communicates directly with Cisco. Second option is smartpock proxy.39:17Which provides an intermediary for environments with tighter security controls. The 3rd option is an on prem CSSM deployment, allowing organizations to manage licensing entirely within their own infrastructure. Choose the right model depending on your organization's policies, security requirements and connectivity preferences.39:31The the most important takeaway is that catalyst center supports multiple deployment scenarios rather than forcing one size fits all approach. Now that we've covered the licensing manager tool.39:52We'll we'll quickly move back to Vijay to take us through the license manager tool itself and then we'll move ahead with the application experience and site based and those features. Over to you Vijay.40:09Thank you. Let me again present my screen. Just a minute. Now in this demo, I would like to quickly show you some of the settings of how you can configure the smart account and the licensing manager, how it's going to help it out. If I go to this in the catalyst center, in the system, in the.40:23Settings tab so you can see there's a bunch of settings I think there. So we have to click on the smart account and in the smart account you can see we have a lot of I think let me just show you. So right now it says already configured on this smart account but but here whenever you are.40:43Configuring in a, in a 1st time, right? You will have to do it this click on add and you have to give the username and password of your admin credentials of the smart account and it is going to authenticate and your smart account will get add on this page of it. And the one more important option is there auto register smart licensing enabled device. It is.41:03Is also a very useful.41:23Useful I think enablement or button basically. So basically what it does, right? It's, it's going to enable, I mean, whatever the Cisco supported devices are there, right? Whatever the Cisco supported devices discovered on the catalyst center, it's automatically going to register those devices with the Cisco smart licensing. So we don't have to do.41:25Point out the traditional way of token based mechanism right of of all our network devices, right? Which we were following the token based mechanisms to assign the license to the network devices. Now, now our catalyst centers basically is going to auto register those licenses. I mean, it's going to enable the Cisco smart licensing on the network devices if we enable this button. So this is the very 1st.41:45Things which we have to do it out. And if you go to 2nd tab, that's the smart licensing where you have to choose the smart account, I think it has already been configured right now on this on this lab basically, but here you can see if it's gonna if it's selected the smart account, the virtual account, whatever you want to do it. So 1st.42:05Still time you will be asked to give the select the virtual account basically you want it and.42:25You will, you will see the registration status is registered. I think once you're successfully integrated, you will see the smart licensing, all the things are, I think it is worked and it's registered. How much licenses? I mean it is compliance or not. You will see all the complete status on the smart licensing menu itself once your smart account is registered.42:32And Askshay already discussed the SSM connection modes, here you can see we we have a SSM connections mode, the three options are there direct on premises CSSM and the smart proxy mode. So directed means you when you have when your catalyst center have a direct I mean just simply think it out how you, how the.42:51Center will connect to the Cisco software manager or Cisco software center, right? How it's going to make a connection. So these are the most the three SSM modes in which it's going to make a connections. If you, if your catalyst center have a direct internet access, you can just select this mode and so catalyst centers will be using to register your network devices.43:12Into the Cisco software into the Cisco software central as well as it's also going to use the reporting, right? After this registration, we also have a reporting things that needs to be giving the informations how much utilizations or how how the usage is happening on it. So those reporting is also going to plan. So this is the mode basically, this is 1st one.43:32It's a direct mode, if you have a proxy in between it out, I mean catalyst center is using the proxy servers, so you can just use the smart proxy options and if if if customer is, I think air gap customers or any, right? They don't want to go with the cloud method, then we have also CSM mode. So to register the.43:51Those, devices with the on premises them we can use this mode as well. So this is the way how we are configuring the Cisco soft Cisco smart account in the catalyst centers. Once it's done now, the things are very simple, now you can easily manage the licenses using the catalyst centers itself, right? So for to see the life.44:11Licenses right we we have a license manager tab in the tools options you can see this license manager and it's going to give you the summary.44:31How your licenses are used. I mean, it's going to give you the purchase summary, what is the used licenses, how many DNA licenses are purchased, how much DNA license are used. So all those summary of your purchase and the used, it's going to give you that informations and if you go down, it will also give you the summary of.44:41How much is purchased, how much is used, how much balance is available, it's also going to give you a quick snap, right? What what is basically you are utilizing, how much your percentage you are utilizing, so you can have a full snapshot of it. And if you go down it will also give you the timeline, right? How much years I mean we have the lines supposed.45:02For this right? 6iE 9300 rux series switches, so we have this from 31st March 2026 to 30 March, 2029. So.45:20I mean it's going to give you till which lay I mean till which years we have the license, the subscription based license are there so you can select it out if you want to move more, use more filter. You want to see how much licenses, which licenses are those for the one year. You can select those filtration options and you can just see what's the timeline is there.45:322nd tab also is going to give you the informations so one is a DNA license and network license. So, so for the devices, right, there are two levels of licenses. One is a perpetual license, that's the network licenses it's going to come. And second is a subscription based license that where the DNA essentials or advantage is going to come up. So here we, we.45:52Can see what how much licenses are there, which are about to expire, which are non compliant, all those information in a one tab itself, and.46:12Once the smart account is integrated, right? With the catalyst centers, you can transfer the license from, from the catalyst center itself from one, one virtual account to the other virtual account. So here you can see, right? These are the so if you want to transfer the license to the other virtual account, you can do it from here itself and you can also.46:21Change the level of license on the devices. So for that, I think we have to go to 2nd 3rd tab that's the devices one and you can see what licenses are being.46:41There, so suppose if I'm just giving an example, right? So here, we have a devices, what level of license is integrated, you can see it out for this switches, we have this DNA advantage licenses, right? So if it's going to give you what level of licenses. If you want to change the license level, you can do that. Suppose I'm just clicking on this device and you want to change.46:52Is the change license level, you can do this from this options, the change licensing, change license mode. You want to change the virtual account for this device, you can do that. You can also, I think if if your devices are.47:12I mean if if if those devices right you the sync has not happened for those devices, you can also reregister those devices to enable the smart licensing. You have multiple options on it and the 4th one I just want to cover cover it quickly, this is the reporting one and this is also going to give you the informations of.47:25I think once your smart account is implicated, we also have to report it out, right? The usage of it. So this is a very important workflow. Once your devices are discovered, you can also run this smart licensing compliance workflow, so to give the reporting workflow that these these devices are registered and and we it is it's also getting.47:45Getting synced with the smart account. So this is very important step that reporting workflow, you can just click on it and do the next, next, next next options and just do it do the compliance of it.48:05So that's it for this demo. I think I would like to pass back to the ball to actually Hey, thanks, thanks for let me quickly share my screen again.48:17Yeah, now let's move to the application experience or application visibility for catalyst center, right? So, a quick, quick on here. So when when when a user calls the help desk, right? They rarely say my switch port has access.48:34The retransmissions, right? Instead they say.48:54Teams is freezing, right? Or my video is, is, my video keeps on buffering or my CRM application feels slow, right? So users experience the network through applications. That's why catalyst center focuses on application experience rather than simply network health.48:58The objective isn't just to keep devices operational. It's, it's to ensure business critical applications perform consistently. Catalyst Center helps identify the applications running on the network, prioritize them when necessary and continuously validate whether they're meeting expected performance levels.49:14So this, this kind of creates a closed feedback loop where automation and assurance work together to improve user experience, right? So.49:34If your ceo's video call freezes, right? They probably won't ask about packet loss. They'll simply ask why is teams not working, right? So that's, that's how we can, we can kind of justify this. Now what is application experience? This is all often referred to as Apex.49:45This is built on three key pillars. The 1st being application visibility. So before you can optimize anything, you need to understand what's running on your network. Visibility provides awareness of standard applications, cloud services, encrypted traffic, and even custom applications. 2nd pillar is application policy. So one.50:04As you know what's important, you can prioritize business critical applications using intent based policies instead of manually configuring your QoS on every device, right? So finally there's application assurance.50:24This is where catalyst center validates whether those policies are actually delivering the desired experience. All together, these these three capabilities create a closed loop operational assistance, right? So visibility tells us what's happening.50:37Policy defines what should happen, assurance, whether verifies whether it is actually happening, right? Or it actually happened. That's that's a much more effective approach than making configuration changes and hoping users notice and improve it, right?50:55Now that we've introduced what application experience looks like, let's look at the technology that makes it possible as an application visibility. One of the biggest operational challenges today is understanding what applications are actually using your network, right?51:12Years ago it was fairly simple. You had email, web browsing file sharing, and maybe a few business applications. Today you have cloud services, SaaS platforms, collaboration tools, encrypted traffic streaming media media, and even custom developed.51:29Applications. Now without visibility, they're all just packets moving through the network. Application visibility changes that. Using N bar two, network based application recognition version two, catalyst center can identify thousands of applications including many encrypted ones. This means.51:44Your operations team can answer questions like which applications are consuming the most bandwidth, which applications are business critical? Are users actually using the collaboration tools we've invested in?52:04Our non business applications impacting our network performance, but visibility is is just the only, it's it's the 1st step. Once you know what's on the network, you can start prioritizing your traffic based on business intent rather than simply treating every application the same. E.g., if if Microsoft.52:16Teams and a software update are completing for bandwidth, most businesses would want teams to receive higher priority.52:36Application visibility provides that awareness. Application policy allows you to act on that awareness. A quick example. Imagine Monday morning, everyone joins video meetings at the same time where laptops are beginning to download operating system updates. Without visibility, all you know that the users are com.52:43With application visibility, you immediately understand where the bandwidth is going.53:03Right? Then we have controller based application recognition or C bar. Think of C bar as the centralized intelligence behind application visibility.53:09Traditionally, if you wanted devices to recognize new applications, updating protocol packs across the network would become a manual and time consuming process. C bar simplifies this by managing protocol packs centrally from the catalyst center itself.53:25It continuously keeps application signatures up to date and distributes those updates across supported devices. Another powerful capabilities support for custom applications. So many organizations run internally developed developed applications that aren't part of the standard n bar like.53:40AC bar allows administrators to define those applications so they can also be recognized, monitored, and incorporated into the application policies. This becomes especially valuable in environments where line of business applications are just as important as commercial software.54:01C Barb also integrates with cloud based sources to continuously improve application recognition over time. The result is much more accurate visibility across your environment, yeah?54:19We've looked at visibility. Now let's talk talk about ensuring the right people have right access to the right parts of catalyst center or the platform itself, right? So for that we have Cisco catalyst center side based packed, our back.54:33Our back is basically role based access control. As organizations grow, managing access becomes just as important as managing the network itself. Not every administrator should have access to every site.54:50Right? Not every operations team should have permission to modify every configuration. That's where side based RBAC comes in. So instead of giving administrators unrestricted access across the entire organization, catalyst center allows permissions.55:05To be scoped by geographical hierarchy. You can grant access at the area level, building level or even floor level. So e.g., a regional IT team responsible only for Mumbai doesn't need administrative access to say Bangalore or delhi. Likewise a helpdesk engineer may only require monitoring capabilities.55:23While a senior engineer may need provisioning permissions permissions as well.55:43This improves both operational effici efficiency and security. It also reduces the risk of accidental configuration changes in parts of the network and administrator doesn't actually manage, right? Now, our back has been part of Cisco Catalyst Center since we start.55:48Role based access control has always been a part of Cisco Catalyst Center. Site based is is is a feature enhancement that will be added in in catalyst center version three.one and above.56:08Right, you might not see it in 237 series and below, but three.one and above is where you'll see this side based RBAC available. So just for clarification, R back is available in all the versions. Side based rbacs will be available only post three.one.56:23Yep. Now let me quickly bring back Vijay to take us through a quick demo of application experience as well as side based. Over to you Vijay. Thanks, thanks actually I know we are running out of time, I will quickly try to showcase the things and.56:40Just a minute. So now this demo basically we are going to cover, I mean for enabling the netflow on the catalyst centers, right? Or basically the C bar and so to enable the C bar and basically I would like to go to one of.56:59Just a minute. So I'm just going to this under the.57:18Under the assurance tab, I think if you see the provisionings tab and we all have application visibility tab. So here you can see how much of your network devices are basically I mean, I mean the in the n bar packages, the very 1st thing you can see how many applications we are supporting. That is 153.57:24Right now, it is it's showing in my catalyst center. So here it's it's it's going to see what all the applications we can recognize by using layer seven inspections on on the users, right? So we we have all those applications list of it.57:44So these all are the applications that are coming on the n bar packages and the very 1st thing in the overview tab, it's going to give you the informations what are how many built in applications are there, how many devices we have enabled C bar and n bar, right? How much devices is not enabled, so it's going to give you a quick snapshot.57:58So so if you see right, right now for this, right, we, the very 1st thing for application telemetry enablement, what we have to do, we have to enable the telemetry that is network device applications telemetry enablement status, so I think you can just go to this I mean once you click the tab it's it's just going to open it out from this. You can just.58:18Select the devices where you want to enable the N bar telemetry, you can click on this and enable the applications telemetry. So once you enable it out, meaning the N bar is getting enabled. To enable the C bar, you can just simply click on it and you can again go to this option and enable the C bar for the devices. So the very 1st thing we have to do this C bar and n bar enable.58:39On the network devices using this page and.58:59And we also have a I think basically for the C bar what it does it's also going to create a one more connections with the UDP port from the network devices to the catalyst centers and catalyst centers is creating a connections with the, with the C bar cloud basically where we have a application signatures or whatever the new applications that are.59:03That are coming on this, on this package, so all those and all those things will be done by the C bar.59:23Cloud so here you can see, right? We we have enabled this option so catalyst centers have created one more connections for the C bar cloud and all. So the two things we have to do it out, the C bar and n bar enablement, just to just to keep in mind. So once we enable those C bar and n bar enablement, you will be getting the applications telemetry. So.59:30Basically in the assurance tab, you can click on this help tab and there's an applications view and here you can see we we have I think similarly to the networking client pages, right? We have an applications tab and you can see the applications performance perspective how the how our applications are working and let me just go.59:50Always jump to another lab to to showcase some of the screenshots and alright it is it's we don't have active client on this lab, so I will just quickly jump to one of the D cloud lab and here if I go to this applications tab and.01:00:10Here we can have a look on it, just a minute. So here, if you see, I have selected one of the particular sites and it's going to give you, give us the informations about the application just loading. So here if you see right, it's going to give you how much business health applications are there. We we have categorized the applications in business.01:00:25Business relevant applications, business irrelevant applications and the default. So we will have a quick overview of what are the applications and how much throughput is being utilized, top end users who is using our applications, what applications they are using, what the health score of those applications, all those insights you will get it out. So here.01:00:45These these applications that are coming from our end bar package, right? If users are using those Webex applications, we can see how they are performing the application perspective, what is the usage, all those different different information from the application basis, it's going to come on this page itself. And we can go inside of those applications and you will see what all.01:01:05Where this data we have exported or where this data is coming from which devices, all those important insights you will be getting if you click on this and and get the more insight of it. But this is a view of of the applications once you enable the C bar and n bar and you will get the good informations on the application performance.01:01:25Perspective. The next thing I also want to just share the informations that the new features right that is rolled on the on the three.one.six release or if I I'm just going quickly go to the another catalyst centers and I will 1st of course show the versions which I'm using. So if you see we are using in this.01:01:45Lab the three.one.five versions and the new features that is being added on this versus that side based site based RBAC. So if you click on this, if you go to the system and.01:02:05In the users and roles, right? If you see, right, if you remember last time, I mean in the earlier releases, right? We don't have this access group option itself. So we have this role based access control and external authentications, but in the newer releases we have this options, the access group and basically what it does now.01:02:18We can we can create the roles for the users, not only just the role, not only just the role basis, we can also select the particular sites as well while while defining it out. So suppose if we create the role, I mean we can define the access group name and give the role basically what we need it out and select the particular site's users.01:02:38What the role you have to give it out. And based on that we can create the create the site based as well I mean what the user policy you want to give it out for that particular site itself. So this is the way I think we can use it out, the create access group and use the site based RBAC. So that's it for this demo, which I have.01:02:58Planned it out, so over to you now. Thank you. So we had few questions in the session and I think they are pretty well answered so we can since we are on the time, we can go ahead for, like, more.01:03:18Sessions that we have. So we have upcoming sessions, you will have the recording of this and previous sessions as well. There is another session that is upcoming, just like this webinar for your information. It is there on the next.01:03:37Thursday 13th, so where we will discuss the assurance advanced features. So what Vijay and Akshay covered, they are the basic features and you can have the advanced feature discussed in the next session.01:03:57Please do register if you haven't. After this you will have a quick survey sent from CX, Cisco CX. Please fill it in. It will not take more than 2 min. This will help us to.01:04:13Improve our delivery for you guys. Any unanswered questions, we will reply you back over to your mail. Anything that you want to discuss, the question answers panelists?01:04:29Or we can close off the session. I think I think the last question was also answered by Vijay so we'll be in the panel for like five to 10 min more guys, so in case if you have any questions, you can maybe just put.01:04:49Them in the chat section and we'll try to answer them. Yeah. Thank you so much. With that we can close off our webinar for today. Thank you, thank you team. Thank you. Thank you panelists, thank you Akshay and Vijay.01:05:09I'll stop sharing my screen. We will be here for maybe last 5 min. Thank you. Hope this session was helpful to you guys.01:05:31And the links are already posted which were discussed in the session. Thanks Rahul for posting the registration link.01:05:46For the next session. So guys, for the assurance advanced session posting the link again, thank you so much.01:06:03