Complete Control End-to-End Network Management with Catalyst Center

Oh, everyone, thank you and welcome. We thank you for joining.00:00Us today for our end to end network management with caller center expert insight series webinar. We really appreciate everyone that's joining today wherever you're you're, you're logged on from, right? So my name is Isaah Parker and together with my teammate Matthew abby.00:16So we will be leading today's session.00:36Right, I'll also like to thank our panelists who have also and are also joining us today. Those are, they are the ones that will be helping with any Q and any questions that you entered within our Q and A's Q and A panel, right?00:39Now, as far as Matthew and I right, we both are customer success specialists here at Cisco with the primary focus on the catalyst center solution and technology. So today myself and Matthew will explore with you how.00:57You can move beyond manual hop by hop configurations, right? Whether it's templates, whether it's manageability and discovering your devices, whether you're using plug and play, right?01:17That will help you to then, go to a model that focuses on policy driven automation as well as proactive assurance. And so this slide here kind of shows the goal of our expert insight series sessions, right?01:31It's it's the ability to share knowledge in a way that then builds upon information from previous sessions to session. And so this definitely supports your ongoing adoption journey. You'll see more details about these additional.01:47XD expert sessions at towards the end of today's presentation. Now before we get started, kind of get get get past some of the few quick logical logistical I should say details right that so during today's pres presentation.02:04And demos, like I mentioned, you do have the ability to ask ask your questions.02:23We ask that you use the Q and A Q and A section, right? You can access that, by clicking the three small dots in the bottom right corner of your screen, right? You see an example here. And then one of our panelists will respond to you as soon as possible. We we ask that you don't use chat, but instead you use the Q and A.02:29Section. However, if any of your questions isn't addressed and not addressed live during the session, your information maybe recorded so that way we can follow up with an appropriate response after the, after the session.02:49So with that, we kinda, we start by looking at the agenda for today's discussion, right? So here is where we focus on network design, right? This will help you to establish both logical as well as physical hierarchy.03:08We then progress to, from the physical hierarchy we looked at, look at the network settings and the device credentials that we'll need that then leads us into device device discovery. Then we'll explore plug and play, right? And this will allow you to implement from.03:24Almost a zero touch provisioning that basically helps to streamline new device onboarding.03:43And then from there, Matthew will then come on to cover the device provisioning feature as well as the templating, right? And this will help you to, to be able to to then progress through the process of being able to make changes to your devices, right? Using.03:50Using those those different solutions and settings and features.04:10And then of course of course finally right as long as we have time at the end, our hope is that we do where we have a call back to action and we'll provide an opportunity for Q and A So with that said, let's go ahead and get started. As you look at this slide, right, we get started with.04:13Or listen to.04:33Because within it, right, you have the ability to streamline and unify network device management. And so these four initial components that you see here, right, are instrumental in in being able to provide the foundation for maximizing those benefits. So we start with installing.04:35In our countless center, of course that's the basics, right? And from here you can install it using a, a physical hardware appliance or you can install it virtually, whether it's through XC and VMware.04:55Whether it's through AWS and of course soon, Azure is is will be a platform that you can utilize, right? And so and so this step will ensure that all your prerequisites are in place and and will establish the groundwork for onboarding.05:08Your network devices in subsequent configurations. The next step is to go ahead and create your hierarchy, right? And this is where you will use this to build out your your your network hierarchy essentially containers, right? And these containers define.05:24Whether it be your regions or locations across your network.05:43Next thing is that we then progress to set up global credentials, right? And this is important because this is where, we, we make sure that the center can securely manage and communicate with all your onboarding network devices.05:49And we'll get into the details of what that what those credentials are in in the upcoming slides.06:08And then of course the last step, right, is where we look at device discovery, right? And this is where you add your any existing brownfield devices that are within your network to the calice center inventory, which then from there allow you to take full advantage of everything Callis Center has.06:15Has to offer. So with that, let's go ahead and and and explore and dive deeper into each of these components more darly.06:35The 1st component is again site hierarchy, right? So this again is where we established the basis for network intent, and this will serve as the backbone for all subsequent management workflows and policy applications.06:46And within the site hierarchy, right? Here is how we design the network hierarchy and how you can structure it. So from a high level perspective, right? This is where you can.07:01Use areas which at the highest level, areas act as a logical subdivision within the hierarchy. Within areas within areas, right? They're considered the children of the default global area. This is a default the the global area is.07:17Automatically created when you initially install account essentials, so it's always there.07:37And then from there from from being able to form a unified network foundation, right? Areas give you that flexibility to contain other areas as well as buildings that allow for more scalability in you within your organization, whether it's across regions or whether they're.07:43Across business units as well.08:02Now kind of going down to speaking of buildings, right? These are the actual physical locations, and they are assigned a geolocation, right? So as you're inputting, and you'll see this in the demo that Matthew provides.08:06You're in entering the address for the building, right? It will auto populate the longitude and longitude and latitude coordinates that will then be able to accurately reflect a mapping of the building somewhat.08:22Similar to how you can see on the example here on the slide. So.08:42With each building, you can include multiple floors, right? So this will represent the physical spaces within the building. Now, this structure does make it easier to manage and visualize your network resources, right? So having this online correctly.08:46Just sets the foundation for the progressive adoption of your counter center, right?09:06So from global regions down to individual fours and assigning these devices and defining the fours within the buildings, you'll be able to achieve a granular control than oversight throughout the your entire network.09:12Now as we kind of dig deeper into with the benefits of the floors, right, Floors add more somewhat spunk, right? To, to the hierarchy. In regards to, because they can define the specific areas.09:30Within the building where wireless connectivity can be deployed and is deployed and managed through your catalyst center. So 1st and foremost, right, one for for for floors, APs, and if you still have the old sensors, right? These can be assigned to to a floor, right?09:47As a matter of fact, APs can only be assigned to a floor and not be assigned to a building.10:08Which is different from a building's perspective. Then from there you can also map a floor map or a unique floor map and associate it to each floor that will allow you to map APs onto that floor plan giving you basically a two dimensional view of the, of their locations.10:14And the overall layout, which also simplify the planning, it will help to optimize the wireless coverage, right? Make it straightforward to manage and adjust deployments as as needed.10:34In conjunction with that, right, we also have CMX if you still have CMX or if you have, it's replacement Cisco spaces. And so this setup will allow for accurate display of connected clients as well as identification of rogue devices within the.10:49Building within that format. So similar to how you see here, you'll be able to see where clients are located. You'll be able to go to the client three 60 from this page, right? Look at the the AP and look at the network three the device three 60 for your APs, and then as well as see any rogue.11:08APs that maybe showing on here as well. So this floor map just basically provides you with real time insights for for your APs and your wireless environment.11:28Now in addition to the two D view, which we we just saw, right? This would be your two D view. There is you can take advantage of the wireless three D analyzer, right? So this will allow you to visualize Wi Fi coverage, basically making invisible world.11:44World of radio frequencies accessible, right?12:04And this is from a 1st person, viewpoint. So with that said, right, this tool will provide you three D heat maps that will help you to monitor and analyze metrics such as SNR or RSSI, right? Interference, right? Some of the critical.12:07So elements that does affect our wireless environments.12:27And so what this does is it it's a, it's built for proactive, also proactive network planning and troubleshooting. It can provide you with the ability to run various simulations. For instance, if you're sending staffed into a field an engineer might use.12:31This three D analyzer to virtually adjust an antenna angle.12:51To verify if it resolves a dead zone in the warehouse before actually making changes physically to that location and to the devices that are there. Now, as we move from the hierarchy, right, we go into server settings.12:56Needs.13:15Now with server settings, right? Here is where you can define the common infrastructure elements such as DNS, triple AAA or NTP servers, right? And so here you can essentializing these settings here, you help to streamline the resource management for all your sites.13:16And so you can see from from from this, right? The left screen shot right here shows how you can, how network servers similar to AAA server, whether you you have ICE deployed.13:36Whether you're using DHCP, for instance or a SDA fabric deployment or just non fabric, right? Where you're just setting up the NTP servers as well as DNS servers, right? Which you see more of this doing during Matthew's demo demonstration.13:52But the main goal right here, right, is to be able to configure and design the, these credentials and these specific settings, right? But tasks like device discovery and provisioning of your devices once you once you, you, you move forward with that. Income.14:08Tracks the right side.14:28What the right side provide you with is, you know, highlights the server settings often called server, server elements. And so at the site level, right? So we looked at the global level, at the site level, this allow you allow for more granular control within the hierarchy.14:29And so settings at the site level will by default inherit values from the global configuration. So you can, that's indicated by the by the inheritance icon that you can see here next to the, the server name.14:49As we progress through the, to the 3rd component, right? We look at global credentials. And this global credentials is another key element to make sure that we secure the management plane which starts with standardizing the way Callist inter interfaces.15:13Which are devices, right? There has to be a communication.15:33For the center to communicate with your network devices. And so by configuring these credentials in advance, it helps to streamline the onboarding process and it provides you with seamless into access that's across your network without manual intervention. So, you know, going into putty.15:37SSH into your devices, right? Still or it is a vital part of your of your daily duty duties and operations.15:57But with the caller center it provides you with that ability to streamline that and and be more automated where just the click of looking at just a click of a button for a specific device will give you access to be able to do similar options within the caller center.16:06Now the global credentials here, they configure it configured through the network settings menu, so the main menu right, network settings and then going under the device credentials section.16:23Here's where you enable your CLI, right? SSH access, your SNMP, whether it's version two or three, any HTTPS credentials for device communication cause again, it's all about device communication. In addition to that, right, from a global level, right, credential settings can.16:38To be c applied globally, but you can also apply them on a site specific basis. For instance, right? You may have a location that may or a set of locations that that use a more common SNMP string, but you might need a more unique.16:58Password for that string if you're dealing with a more sensitive site such as a research facility. So definitely you can take advantage of using the global credentials to set those credentials.17:18In in and ahead of time right and in advance so that way it helps to, to manage as well as monitor your devices more more sufficiently.17:31Now, one note here, one of the things you can do, right? You can configure up to ten global credentials, right? So for each type, so CLI SNMP, so on and so forth.17:46But only one single job specific credential is assigned for each credential type at any given time. Alright, next we can't we turn our attention to network profiles, right? So.18:02We'll cover a high level overview, as Matthew will cover a more detailed demo of this network component. But the basis of what we wanna focus on here is that when you think of network profiles within center.18:20These are policies. This is a policy that assigns specific common feature feature configurations to sites based on the device type, right? Now, of course, templates can be attached to the network profiles which further define associations at a granular level. What I mean by that is.18:36As you know templates can, can, can be created based on device type, right? They can be associated based on chassis type, even specific chassis models like the 9300 switch.18:56And what this does is it just basically helps to standardize configurations and it eliminates manual errors during the deployment process because it's all about being able to, to, to be able to automate your processes that will save you time, that will save money, that will be more.19:08Valuable for for your operation, your network operation duties.19:28Now custom tags can be associated with templates, and these basically provide just additional gran granularity, right? When applying configurations, this allows you to target particular devices or scenarios within your network. For instance, like if you have a specific BU that requires specific.19:33Configurations or a specific template.19:54You can associate those tags to to make it more granular in, in that regard. In addition, right, profiles play a crucial role in, automating the onboarding workflows such as plug and play, right? Which we will we will cover, I will cover in.19:56In a demo here, and, and it enables a site basically to automatically inherit the appropriate template in the device type configuration. So that way when you go through the the workflow, it's able to then quickly and then automatically.20:16Configure your devices as you as you complete that process. All right, so kind of sticking to the theme of network profiles, the main here, the main goal here is that it provides you with an an intent based design. And what I mean by that is that it delivers.20:36Significant value because they're able to support large scale standardization.20:56So they allow you to design as well as reuse your configuration templates, but across numerous locations, across numerous device types and and scenarios. So with a single profile, it's possible to equip hundreds of branch sites with identical reliable settings.21:02That would then make every device a predictable, well managed asset. Now, this, the profiles not only bridge the gap between network design and physical deployment, but it also does includes mechanism mechanisms that help prevent accidental assignment.21:21Of conflicting configurations to your, to your to the same site, right? So it has the ability, one of the the call outs here is that you can see it in in the 5th bullet point here is only one for each type of network profile is allowed to be assigned to a site.21:41Right, right? So that's one of the things that helps to prevent any, any overlaps.22:01I won't go into a lot of detail here. This just simply provides an illustration of how you can create a profile in the user interface and how simple it is, right? So basically you you select whichever type of profile that you want and you can see the.22:11Options from assurance, firewall, routing, switching as well as wireless. You may have other options depending on the, the, the software version that you're running for your caller center.22:31From there, once you select the the actual profile, you basically enter the the unique profile name. If you're, if you're assigning an onboarding or a day in template, you, you enter that and and add that those templates.22:43You save it and then basically it's created from there. Now, once they are created, the most critical part is to make sure that you bind those network profiles and you link them to a particular site element within your hierarchy, and you can see that example here, right?23:00So, here allows you to bind the binding piece of it, right, allows and ensures that any device provision at that location.23:20Will automatically inherit the configurations and the policies defined in the assigned profile, and this is fundamental, right? This is also fundamental for achieving automated day zero provisioning when you're talking about the plug and play feature. Alright, so now we we transition.23:32Into, looking at the using the discovery tool and how we can onboard our brownfield devices, right?23:52So when it comes to discovery, in the discovery tool, it's make it's essential to make sure that we can automate the workflow for the caller center to detect and onboard your brownfield network devices, right? So here this pro.24:03This is about learning at your devices, right? It's about being able to leverage the credentials that you've already pre configured, not just inter, but making sure that they're pre configured on the actual devices. That's very key, right? And then making sure that once the device.24:24Devices discovered successfully.24:43You that that device is added into the inventory. So that's why most if not all of this information that we're sharing today is critical especially the prerequisites, right? That will help to define and and make the process efficient and successful as you progress through your adoption.24:46Now catalyst center offers these, these particular protocol methods for discovering your network network devices each tailored to different scenarios and protocols. And you can see the ones that are available here from IP address range, Cisco discovery.25:10Every protocols, so CDP, LLDP as well as CIDR. And for this I'll go into more details when I get into the demo here shortly as we cover how to discover a device. So I'll go into this a little bit more in detail, but you can use this as kind of a high level overview of.25:30Kind of what each of these protocols can, can offer you.25:50Now, before beginning the device discovery, right? And I've mentioned this before, it is very important that you ensure that all the prerequisites are set because this will allow you to have a smooth and successful onboarding process. The 1st thing we start with is supported device devices, right? So use the compa.25:57Credibility matrix to look at the devices that you plan to onboard into the caller center.26:17It, the matrix will, include things like recommended software version for those devices, the device models and series themselves. It will give you an opportunity to see the the various features that are available, right? Because you don't want to risk the the.26:24You don't want to risk onboarding the device and having limited options for that device in catalyst center because it lacks or it does not support it does not support the catalyst center, and, and, and the features that it provides.26:44The next thing to look at is network latency, and that's important, right? So ensure that the network latency between the catalyst center as well as the target devices is less than a hundred milliseconds, as higher latency can cause.27:00Discovery failures. So that's a call out there. It's very, very important. The next thing is the SNMP, and this is your version three version two SNMP credentials. And we do recommend that you configure these in advance for proper management. However, our.27:17Of.27:37The Talos Center offers a feature called the device controllability, which will allow it to configure SNMP settings automatically if they do not ex already exist on the device. Now of course you have to configure it within the Talos Center global credentials, but as long as you do that.27:37That that that's not an a situation that would cause any issues. That's something that as long as you have device controllability enabled, it will help with automating that piece of that requirement.27:57And then the last thing, and I've mentioned this before, right? You need to set up your SSH credentials, right? These are your CLI SSH access credentials. They must be configured on the device in advance because center uses SSH for connectivity with your devices.28:10And so your discovery jobs, and any further management and, and, and, and provisioning of your devices will fail if your CLI is not configured correctly on your devices. And of course making sure that you conclude the correct configuration CLI credentials.28:29In the network in the global credential settings as well. Alright, so this just kind of dives deeper into device controllability and how doing discovery you can leverage it to automate the the configuration change.28:49Throughout discovery and site assignment.29:10On the left here you can see during discovery it can help with these specific con settings and configurations, right? If they, if they don't exist. In addition to that, right, when you're assigning a device to a site, that's the time when your telemetry type of settings are being.29:13Been configured on the device and it helps to to to process and push those type of configs to your devices, right? So certificates, controller certificates, swim certificate, right? Your telemetry settings, things like that.29:32So one of the things to note that if you do have device controllability ability turned off, Callistentle won't push any of these credentials and features during discovery or site assignment. Instead you would have to, You would have to apply those either use.29:50Using the full provisioning, the full device provisioning option or manually trigger the update telemetry settings in the inventory. All right that with that, we're ready for our 1st demo, so I'll go through this fairly quickly because we still have plug and play to, to.30:10To cover. So give me a second to let me let me go ahead and get through here.30:31Let me log in so as we, as we look at the caller center and we, and we look at device discovery, right?30:37Of course this is assuming that we have all of our prerequisites already completed and fulfilled. So one of the things I always like to do is to show the version currently this this particular lab is, is running version 23710, right? You maybe running 2379. It's.30:55It's not it's not really any different so I always like to show that so you can identify of course right we we have the dark mode for this version if you're a dark mode fan, right?31:15So you can leverage that as well. Now, as we proceed, right, we need to go to the main menu, and from the main menu, looking at the linear menu options, we need to go to tools cause remember discovery is a tool.31:29So under tools, I go to discovery and here is this discovery dashboard. From here, you have different filters that you can leverage in in the case, right? It also shows any previous configurations that you haven't deleted out, right? And then of course you have the option to add.31:44A fully new discovery with NO configure configurations or settings selected. But what I'm gonna do for for this demo, right? I'm going to use this 9800 controller.32:04And I'm gonna use this previous setting, previous discovery to to show you how you can also leverage the previous discoveries to either rediscover that device. If for instance, you had to delete it out, right? You can delete this. This is how you delete the actual discovery jobs.32:19As well as I can copy and edit this. So if I have a device similar in settings, right, that I don't want to fully recreate it from scratch, I click on edit, copy and edit. And so what that does is it copy and edits a majority of the configurations from that previous job allow me to make changes.32:38Right, and so from here we have the discover discovery job name.32:58I mentioned the different discovery types, right? So from here, IP address range is generally the, the, the, the option that most customers use because you have the ability to, to be to define and uniquely within a bubble right, discovered devices.33:04That you know you want to discover. So with that, right, if you're doing a single device, you, you, you enter the starting IP address versus the end ending IP address.33:23If you have multiple devices within that same IP address range, you basically would do enter a starting and then ending. You can click on the plus sign to add more lines of IP address ranges, right? And so that's the, that's the premise of IP.33:34Address range. Now, when it comes to CDP.33:54As well as LLDP, which are similar, right? Each one of these require a seed IP address. It requires you to enter a LLDP or I say LLDP, but CDP or LLDP level. This is basically the number of hops you want it to take in the path to discover.33:58And scanning your network for devices.34:18Definitely if you don't want to to have certain devices found, definitely encourage you to not to reduce this number as much as possible, right? Cause this especially if you have a large a large environment, it, it will go through and it will try and attempt to onboard all of the devices being.34:22Based on the number of apps.34:41You also have the option to include subnet filters and basically what this does is it exclude any specific subnets that you don't want to be scanned, right? Now, as far as the last option, which is the CIDR, it works similar where you have the C IP address as well as the sub.34:42The filters except you're entering a prefix, a prefix late. By default is 30, but you can add between 20 and 30. When it comes to the preferred management IP address, this icon does give you kind of an indication of what you can, you can leverage here.35:02Generally you could keep it as none. Callis Center will go through the the the automation piece of and and the algorithm of deciding which one is the with the preferred management IP address. But again, if you're using IP address range, which is generally going to be one of those IP addresses anyway.35:21So we're not ready to go to the next screen. Give me a second here. I'm gonna make sure Let's see. Alright, so for the next screen, it's all about providing the credentials, and if you've already pre configured this, it makes it fairly simple, right? It's a, it's a matter.35:39Of just clicking on the ones that you want to include in this, in this job.35:58Right. If you needed to, you could create job specific CLI credentials as well as SNMP credentials. You could do the same right for HTTPS, but you can see the options from CLI to SNMP.36:03To HTTP, the ones that you need. As far as protocol order, that's automated, right? That's enabled by default, right? You don't want to use telnet, right? You don't want to do that. And then you have the option to, to change the polling properties.36:19From there we go to the next screen and this is all about scheduling the job. And within scheduling a job here is where you can do it now or you can do it at a later time. You can see that option here. This option for discovering new devices only especially if you're using CDP and LLDP, this helps.36:36To bypass any devices that you've already discovered that are already in catalyst center, right? So using that option will then allow just only new devices to be discovered.36:56Now, when it comes to the assignment of devices to an existing site, right? The only call out I'm gonna say here is if you're doing a a singular or a standalone device like I'm doing in this demo, right? Assigning to a device won't be an issue. You can do that. The call out here is that you can only select one site.37:08When you're using this option. So if you're discovering multiple devices, I would definitely recommend not, not using this option, but just assign them once they are in the inventory.37:27So with that said, we go to the next screen, which is the summary, give me a second here and hopefully it didn't proceed on me. Again, this is a a live yep it should be showing it. Give me a second.37:40And of course it's not gonna show the summary, so basically it shows the summary and then from the summary, right, you're able to then, go ahead and pro and process the discovery of the devices based on your settings. Alright, so with that, I'm gonna click this and I'm gonna go back to.38:02Go back to my my presentation deck. And so now that we've talked about discovering devices as it pertains to your brownfield devices, right? Now we kind of go into the plug and play feature.38:24And the premise for the plug and play feature is to be able to give you an automation tool that will enable seamless onboarding of any new devices that you're trying to bring into your network as well as the catalyst center, but with minimal manual intervention, right? From here, you can.38:40You can leverage PEP to upgrade software images so you can load images here. You can include configurations that pertain to boot configs, startup configs, using a template, the day zero template to, to onboard devices that add a little bit more configurations from the the.39:00System generated day zero template right and configurations. And then you can use this to onboard new routers, new switches, new wireless controllers, as well as APs.39:20And the main goal here is to make sure we can help you to eliminate the need for console cabling on devices as well as specialized technical staff on site because this will allow you to automatically discover or provision as well as configure and deploy.39:35New devices as soon as they are powered. Now the plug and play architecture, right? Just kind of want to show this right quick. One the the caller center, it serves as the PNP server.39:52From there right the each device's iOS XE software contains a built in AP agent PMP agent I should say for seamless integration, and so when the new device is powered on, it obtains the IP address from DHCP server and.40:08It established that establishes that secure connection with the, with the catalyst center using the Sudi certificates that you can see there.40:28Another option is the PNP connect, right? PNP Connect allows you to, once you purchase a device, right? That information when integrated with caller center will further enable remote device discovery.40:38By allowing and importing, automatically importing that inf the product information for that device into the center again once it's purchased. So once those devices are discovered into the canada center, right, they show up as unclaimed, then from there you can then leverage the claim process to.40:54Onboard those devices into, to further put them to further be able to monitor and manage them accordingly.41:14This process right here is basically the workflow, so it starts with preparation, right? Make sure that you prep, that you prepare for your the plug and play feature and workflow, right? And that's of course making sure that the cabling is correct, making sure.41:26That you have the IP address, scope.41:45Already ready within the DHCP server that you include the, the various discovery methods and I'll talk about that here on the next slide. And then from there, once that that device discovers the catalyst center as the PEP server, from there you can then claim that device, right? And, and basically.41:50Go from zero configuration to a fully configured device within the call center.42:10Now of course the the the plug and play onboarding process right is the initial configurations to get that device up and running. It takes step two to continue with those adjustments by applying any day in templates as well as provisioning the device to further get that device to its final state.42:17Now when we talk about the plug and play, right, here, it is is how we can operate a, in a fully automated manner. 1st step is to leverage the PMP string in your DHCP server with options either option 60 or 40.42:39Three just in case either one of them are not available.42:59For the DNS lookup, right? That's using the PNP server.loca local domain to resolve to the caller center IP address, right? And then the 3rd one is a cloud redirection, and what that does is, it allows you to, to set up in order to, to.43:02Move the device contacts based on the device helper.cisco.com, and this is based on the the information that you have.43:22And a call center IP address that you have for your organization. I won't go into a lot of detail about the manual way, but you do have the ability to use a USB based bootstrapping if you needed to use it. The only call outs is that it's restricted to cat cat nine series devices.43:31As well as it is, does not support access points. So quickly, this basically shows the option 43 string, right? It's essential to to make sure that you follow the the right.43:50The right syntax, right? One, the semicolons are required, so if it includes semirocolons, it, you must include those. In addition, any letters in this string must is case sensitive, so they must be capitalized. If you use lowercasion that that process will fail.44:09The other thing is make sure that you use the enterprise VIP IP address for this IP address within this string, because if not, you would run the risk of, there being an issue with onboarding or or the initial installation of that device running to any issue.44:29A misconfiguration can prevent prevent successful device onboarding.44:50Next, this is basically showing the CLI of the device, right? Once it has been powered on, given an IP address, you could see the the option 43 string that it has provided, and as well as you can see the PEP discovery.44:58Option or or or information that it provides to the device if you was using that, that specific discovery method. And then lastly, this is just to illustrate kind of going into the.45:16The plug and play dashboard but other than that, I'm gonna actually show you in real time how to go ahead and use the the plug and play workflow. So coming back to my lab, right? I'll go to the main menu.45:34Here I'll go to provision and then I'll go to plug and play, so that's how you get to it, right? And so already I've already set up all the prerequisites that I need to to make sure that I can show this accordingly.45:51From here, right, I'm using this switch here. You basically will select select this device, go to actions and claim, and it pretty much opens the workflow for it.46:06Now, one of the things to call out, right? You do not necessarily have to use a onboarding template, a day zero template, so you could just scroll through or go through the workflow and onboard this device within minutes.46:22And so if you, if you're doing that in that way, right, the device name if you want to change the device name here, this is where you would do that. In my case, I'm actually using the template that will include the host name, so I won't worry about that. This page is the key page, right? Assigning the site because again my network settings and the settings that I will.46:37Want for this device is based on, the, the site that I have it associated to. So with that, I will select the Cisco remote lab. That's gonna be my site and click assigned, so I see it here. I can now move forward. You know when you selected the right site, right?46:57Because the configuration will populate accordingly. So this is the template that I want to use if you've selected a golden image, right? It'll show that here so you can leverage upgrading as well the device to the software image that you want during this process.47:16Just note that doing the on just regular onboarding process using the template, it could take to 3 min to 5 min to even 10 min. It just depends. However, if you add in the on the upgrade of the software image, it could take upwards of 30 to 45 min, right?47:34Because it goes through the whole distribution and and.47:54And activation of the device or of of the image I should say. Excuse me. Now in our case, we're not, so I'm gonna clear this image and I'm gonna go on to the next screen. Now I'm gonna go through this. I'm gonna scroll, go through this quickly because Matthew is gonna cover templates and and he'll cover.47:57When using variables, right? And, and further deep in much detail, but you can definitely use variables during the onboarding process, right?48:18So let me go ahead and put in the IP address that I need. You can see that turned green. That's what you want. Give you a thumbs up, we can proceed. Here is the summary, right? And from here you can see all of the the device configurations that will be pushed to this device.48:26This information is day con day zero configuration preview, right? This, these information highlights, for instance, all your network settings, your server settings, right? Your global credentials, right? It didn't goes into details with the system generated day zero CLI configuration. That's why.48:44You can do this without a onboarding template. But if you do provide a template, you can also see that template here. You can see that I have a host name and other type of configurations that that are needed here. So with that, I'll close this, I'll hit claim. I will hit yes.49:04So once I do and and complete the claim process, we can see that change to device claim instead of it being devices ready. You can monitor the the history and the configuration process by clicking on the device name.49:23Going under history, right? And from here, you'll be able to it's called course lagging on me, but you can see the history when it goes through the process. One last call out here that I'm going to mention is that.49:39In addition to individual devices, this does PP does support you onboarding stacks of switches, right? So you can, you can leverage that here as well. So with that, that is the end of my part of the presentation, so I will stop sharing here.49:58Now we'll basically turn it back over to Matthew and he's gonna continue the the conversation forward. Matthew over to you. Awesome, Isaiah I appreciate the introduction here. So, you know, we've got lots of questions coming in about this sort of topic, so hopefully i'll be able to address them.50:18Device provisioning is definitely a big topic. I know there's been just some, you know, general questions about what config is pushed when and that's really the goal of this section is to address a lot of those questions.50:36So let's let's get into the the 1st approach here, which which I would call, and we've all heard this term for a long time, it's the invent intent based approach, right? And the concept of this is.50:52Basically, what we do is we create those sites in the hierarchy. Those sites are then assigned to their network settings, network profiles are created for those sites where you're assigning your day end templates, maybe for wireless, we're talking about your.51:08Ssids, and so on. And those are all tied up into the network profile. And then we are also assigning the network devices directly to the site. And then from there, what we can do is provision the device.51:24So that way it will get in compliance with all of those settings at the very end when we do that provision action from Catalyst Center. And so I'll make sure to to go through a demo on when these settings are brought in and and show you that configuration.51:41But I did want to show and bring attention to the other option here, which is pushing the template from the CLI templates page. And what this is gonna do is effectively circumvent those network settings and push your template directly to the device.51:57So this is useful in an environment where maybe your environment doesn't perfectly suit the needs of the network settings intents and but you still want to utilize the templating feature. And this was something that we provided to our customers in 237X.52:17So the concept is you create the day in templates, you assign them to the network profiles, those network profiles are associated with the sites or locations that you want them provisioned to, and then the network device of course it has its own platform or family.52:33Where you created the template for that specific platform or family. And from there we'll provision the template directly rather than provisioning the device from the inventory, so we're gonna make sure to look through both of those.52:51When we get to it. Okay, so this is just a general breakdown of what a day end change might look like. So you what you'll do is create that template in the, the template editor. You'll assign the template to the network profile.53:06Which is of course associated with those sites, and then you'll either use the provision device or the template workflow, and then from there you can check the compliance of that template for those future changes or modifications to the device. So if any command has changed on the device that was supposed to be in a template, you can make sure that the.53:23Places and compliance.53:43So with that, let's go ahead and, just do a brief demo. So I'll bring up my catalyst center here, go ahead and log in.53:45And so where I want to direct us 1st is to design in the network hierarchy cause this is really where it all starts. This is the 1st design when you, you come into catalyst center, you're going to specify your areas, your buildings, and your floors.54:08As Isaiah, you know, brought us through earlier, and the concept here is we're separating out where we're going to assign our devices to from the inventory. So what we have is a global site and underneath that we have children's sites, which can be areas, buildings and floors.54:25What an area is, is effectively just a container. This could be a way to subdivide out some network settings for a specific location. We have buildings. These are effectively just areas, but they have a latitude and longitude, so they're gonna show up on the map.54:44And then we have floors where we can assign our access points and we have floor plans within it. Okay, so, once we've generally configured our network hierarchy in a way that we want it structured, we were gonna come over to the network settings.55:01Where we can see our site wide standardized you know things like servers, our standardized device credentials, our wireless settings, our telemetry settings for the site, and we can configure these as I mentioned at the, at the.55:18The site level over on the left here. So we can see that same hierarchy from the network hierarchy and so we can configure things at the global level if these are standardized across all of our sites or we can go down and drill into a specific site like this MA MIA building.55:38Where we can see that those settings have been inherited from the global level. And from here what we can do is we can modify them so if a specific site has different DNS servers, then you could go ahead and modify them here. What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna go ahead and change this.55:55The IP address of the NTP servers, just so I can demonstrate when we do the provision action that this change actually is going to take place for the devices assigned to this site, ok? So we'll go ahead and save this.56:16And then 3rd, what we have under design is the network profiles, which as Isaiah mentioned, the concept here is we have our device templates that we've created in the CLI templates or the template editor. And this is our way to get those settings.56:34Tied to those locations or sites. So for a switching profile, if I go to the top right, I can add and create a switching profile here. For a switching profile, I can assign the sites that I want for this particular profile.56:52And within this switching profile, here I can go and create or attach a template directly to this profile. So we can see my repository of templates here, and let's go ahead and we'll actually make a template here.57:07So if I go to design CLI templates and we're gonna go ahead and create a new project. So effectively what a project is, is a folder or a container for all of your templates.57:24The only one which we'll talk about more in a little bit that really is important is this onboarding configuration folder or project and the purpose of this project is to contain all of your plug and play templates. So if you're onboarding new devices, this is where you're day zero or you.57:42Your onboarding templates are gonna be placed. Okay, so what we're gonna do just for the purposes of this webinar is create a new project. We'll call it EIS end to end management and we could go ahead and give it a description here, but I'm gonna continue.58:02And from here it's gonna have me go straight into create a new template. We're just gonna call this management's ACL. And there are some additional options here. We have a regular or composite sequence. Right now we'll go for regular, but I'll talk later about composite sequences. The template.58:22Floating languages, I'll talk about more in a little bit as well, and we'll specify iOS XE, and this is the important piece, right? When we're talking about bringing together the intents, so we want this configuration to be applied to a specific device family or platform.58:42So we want to specify the the device family, which is gonna be switches and hubs in this case, and I'm gonna add some additional granularity to this and I'm gonna specify the 9300 switch. So we'll click add and continue.59:00And this is gonna open up the template editor, which again will come back to when we talk about some of the more advanced templating strategies. I'm gonna just paste some raw iOS XE in here and the reason I'm doing this is to show you and demonstrate that you can take advantage of CLI templates right away without any of the addition knowing the additional.59:16All templating language features. So we have a very simple template here and it creates a new extended ACL and a management ACL. It's gonna create a VLAN AD and create an SVI and assign that ACL to the interface.59:37Okay, so we'll go ahead and save this and commit and what we'll do now that I've saved this and committed it, we're going to go to our network profiles.59:55And we'll go back to the switching profile, which is where the device that I'm going to be working with today is assigned to, and we're going to attach that template that we just created as a day in template. So here we have a management ACL.01:00:12So there you can see that. And so this is sort of coming full circle on that. So we've created this network profile, it's assigned to the sites where our devices are gonna live.01:00:32And we can see that it's showing 9300 switch. So the concept here is whenever we go to the inventory, if we do a provision action on a device that meets that criteria, so it's assigned to this site.01:00:41And it is of that device plant family or platform, then we're gonna push this template onto that device, ok? So we'll go ahead and save this day in template within our network profile. And the 1st workflow I want to show, which is the 1st that I described, is the intent based approach, so that's provision.01:00:57Putting the device directly from the inventory. So we'll go over to the inventory.01:01:17And here I have this switch two, which is a 9300 series switch, and it is at this location which falls within the sites at that profile. So we'll go ahead and click.01:01:22On the device, we will go down to provision and provision device, and we'll see some of the the things that I mentioned earlier. So under advanced configuration, we can see all of the templates that would be associated with this device. So if you had a.01:01:39One of other templates attached to this profile for this platform, then they would show up here. And under summary we'll get all of that other intent that I was talking about. So we can see that the network settings are going to be provisioned.01:01:59When, when we go through this intent based process, ok? So we'll click next and it'll show you a config preview, click next and this is gonna generate a config.01:02:18Duration preview of all the changes that Catalyst Center wants to take.01:02:38To get this device in compliance with the network settings, all of the templates that we have associated with that profile for this device, and so on. So we'll, we'll see that configuration in just a second here.01:02:42Okay, so, we can see.01:03:02Our initial change, right? So this device has been previously confi provisioned. So we can see the initial change when we went to the network settings and we changed that NTP server. We can see that it's changing here. And we can also see.01:03:09That it wants to push out all of the config within our template that we provided. So really what I'm demonstrating here is that if we do the provision from the inventory, it's going to provision both the network settings as well as our configured templates. I'm gonna go ahead and discard this.01:03:25And we're gonna do the provision template workflow, and we'll see that the network settings not get pulled in when we when we go through that workflow. So we'll go to design and CLI templates. And what we'll do is we'll go to that template, I'll click select and we have a different option here to provision.01:03:41In templates, ok? So we can go ahead and click this provision templates, and this is sort of the reverse. You can think about it in the reverse way. Instead of provisioning the device, you provision the template, and what it'll do is it'll populate here with all of the devices that are capable.01:04:01Of being provisioned to this template, meaning that it meets the criteria of the network profile and is compatible with the series that we selected for the template. So we'll click next, we'll click next to apply it to this device.01:04:21And here we could fill out any variables if there were any, and we'll generate a preview for this one.01:04:39Okay, and so what we can see here is that the network settings were not pulled in, just the template.01:04:59And doing it this way will provide the exact same compliance as the network profile compliance. So either way you go, it's the exact same compliance for this, this configuration, and we'll, we'll take a look at that in just a second. So I'm gonna go ahead and deploy it.01:05:08We'll go ahead and log into the device and a really important feature here is this provision status. So we can see that this device has been provisioned.01:05:29And, what, what you'll see here is any devices that are not on the latest version of the template, so we actually have an internal version control system for templates. What you'll see is any devices that aren't up to date or provisioned to that device will show with the yellow triangle.01:05:44And any devices where the template couldn't properly provision fully will show up with red and we can click into the status to see what devices those are, ok? So let's just check and make sure that this config is properly on here.01:06:03And we can see here that we have our extended ACL configured and we can see that our SVI was created and the ACL was configured onto it.01:06:23Okay, so what if I went ahead and I broke this template, right? So what if I go in and I just delete the existing ACL here?01:06:38Yeah, so we just removed that ACL, ok, so ACL is removed. We will write a running config.01:06:56Or start up config, so if I go to provision an inventory and I go back into this device, you can go to device details.01:07:16And we'll go to the compliance summary page and we'll see that there's NO network profiles tiled here because there's hasn't been any previous templates that we've applied to this device. So what I'm gonna do compliance checks run on a daily basis today wants to run at 05:30.01:07:4203:00 p.m.. So I'm gonna go ahead and kinda run this compliance check and what we'll see is that we have a new network profile violation.01:08:00And if I go ahead and click into this violation, we'll see that it it doesn't like the fact that this config has been removed from the device. So, so we do have some later day compliance against these templates even regardless of which way that we provision them and what we can do is like the fix all configuration compliance issues.01:08:29Button, we can schedule the fix against this violation and you'll see that it wants to reprovision the device with those settings, ok? So if someone comes in and removes config from your templates, we have network profile compliance here for the those that use case.01:08:49So here we can see that it wants to push this back onto the device. We'll go ahead and click deploy, and while this is happening, let's go ahead and move forward with the presentation.01:09:11I wanna get get into just templates, we'll do a kind of an overview. So what I would say when it comes to templating, right? We can take this as simple or as far as we really want to. We have access to these really powerful templating languages, velocity and ginger too.01:09:29So velocity is sort of the older of the two. It was grandfathered in from, from prime. And the real reason that it's in Catalyst Center is to keep that compatibility with those templates that you have in prime.01:09:46So if you want to migrate those templates off prime onto catalyst center, you can totally do that. But today and sort of looking into the future, we're, we're looking at more on the ginger side and they're pretty similar, just syntactically, they look a bit different.01:10:01So between the two we can do all of the things that that you see here, so we can do variable references to create variables. We can do assignment to assign variables certain values. We can do conditionals, so if a variable is equal to this value.01:10:19Then we want to render out this piece of text, and that's actually a pretty good concept, so the concept of rendering is taking a block of text or so effectively the way that I would look at this is we're trying to engineer.01:10:38A White space and text, right? So Ginger was actually created way back in the day for HTML to allow since HTML is a static language to allow you to dynamically at runtime change the HTML code to allow you to generate a completely new.01:10:55Web page. And it's NO different here, right? So we're trying to manipulate the white space and the text that is.01:11:15Our configuration, right? So, so when you see something like the conditional there, if host name is equals to border zero one, then we want to render this output to the screen. That could be a config command, and so on. And then for conditional and then for the.01:11:23Loops, what we do is we can iterate through certain things like maybe a list of interfaces.01:11:43Where you want to configure a certain command onto them. So you could iterate through every interface and then have that command applied to that device or that interface. We also have implicit variables for our system.01:11:49Bind variables or or bound variables is the term that will will probably look at. And then these both support interactive mode and enable a multi line mode. The real big difference is that Gingja has filters.01:12:04So you can bring in things like some built in Python functions to allow you to do some additional stuff, but the the core is essentially the same. There's just some additional functionality with.01:12:23So there are a couple of call outs in working with the templates. So the 1st thing is every single line is in config terminal mode by default. If you want to do an enable command, you have to use the hash tag mode_enable block.01:12:38And then whenever you're finished with enabled mode end it with hashtag mode_and enable, ok? So that's something to be aware of. There are additional special keywords that we can use for interactive commands as well.01:12:55So any time where a config has like a question, like, you could have it respond with a certain value. Excuse me, when you're provisioning that day in template, we can also do multi line commands with the multi line command syntax.01:13:11And then there are a few blocked commands within Catalyst Center, e.g., router list as well as host name, and there's also a provision conflicts within Catalyst Center to basically, anytime.01:13:30Your command would overwrite an existing intent setting, like, you know, a DNS server or something like that. It's gonna let you know it's just gonna give you a little warning. If you're just applying these directly from the template hub.01:13:46You could effectively, you know, when you see that warning symbol, and it's not being used, you're not using intents in your environment, you can effectively ignore that symbol, right?01:14:01So let's take a look at the template editor within Catalyst Center and what this really is is an integrated development environment. So, we'll go ahead and get back into Catalyst Center, and I will go to design and the CLI templates.01:14:17And we'll just use that template that I previously used. We'll go to this project and we see it here. If I click into it, it's gonna bring me to that template editor and we'll see under templates we have the iOS for this template.01:14:36We have the system variables assistant, which is gonna provide you with bind variables. So these are things that Catalyst Center knows about your device and common settings that you can pull into your template to do potential.01:14:54Conditionals on, so if you wanted to have a check to say, hey, if the device is this platform, then we'll render out this line for only, you know, 94 tens, we want to push this command. You could do that kind of thing.01:15:10Or if you want to grab all of the interfaces on the device within our template, we can do that as well with under double under, interface. Okay, so what we're gonna do quickly is just bring in some of that syntax that we looked at.01:15:27To create just some variables. And if you think about the config that we have here, typically you work backwards so you'll have some config that you want to templatize. So what we could do is templatize potentially the name. So we'll just name this ACL name.01:15:43As a more generic name and this syntax here is the Ginger two syntax for what we call an expression. So this is going to get rendered out to the screen, but what it also is, is the syntax to create a variable.01:16:01Within the catalyst center editor here. So if I go ahead and save, well actually let's go ahead and I'll I'll go ahead and get through the rest of the template and then we'll head over to the variables tab. So what we'll do is we'll also templatize the VLAN number again.01:16:19Okay, so we're gonna do that here, here, here, here as well, and also we're gonna take the ACL name and we also want it to be here, right? Cause those are gonna be the same.01:16:39So let's go ahead and save and commit and the concept that we we've just gone through is effectively templatizing these values, so that way they could be applied to any device, right? You could, if you had a new ACL.01:16:56In a new we could do that with this template. So we'll go over to the variables tab and we see ACL name. We can give this a field name. So this is what the user's gonna see when they come to provision their device. So they're gonna see ACL name, and then you're they're gonna.01:17:14Enter it, right? And it says required variable here. We want this to be a string, we could assign a default value for this, as well as a hint, which is gonna show up right below. So, we'll go ahead and do a hint for the VLAN number.01:17:34And we'll say VLAN here, we will assign this as an integer. Again, we want this to be a text field, but we could have it select from, you know, multiple values. And then down here we'll say example.01:17:52You know, 80, right? And that'll show the user who's provisioning this template that this is the format that you're expecting this to be in. We could have additional sanitization inside of our template if we want to make sure that these values are correct for what we're trying to do.01:18:09But for this purpose, we'll go ahead and just save and commit. And then we'll take you over to the simulation tab where we can go ahead and just run a simulation on this. So if I was a user and I had taken this template, assigned it to a network profile.01:18:29And the device that I'm going to provision is, you know, meets all the criteria for this template to be provisioned, then this is what the the user or the person provisioning it would be prompted with. So they they would be prompted with the ACL name as well.01:18:46As the VLAN, right? So, we'll just say what we had before was correct and we'll just say that this is the device that we want to apply it to with, with bind variables or those bound variables, this is really important for the simulation to pull in information about the device.01:19:06So if we were pulling in a list of interfaces, it would do that based on the device that we selected. You can also, for a bigger scale, right, if you were applying this to many devices, you can also export these template parameters. It'll give you a CSV.01:19:26You can modify that CSV in maybe an automated fashion and import the template parameters to provision this against, you know, like you would basically automate the process of filling out the values and fields within the template.01:19:42So we'll run the simulation here and we'll see that it's gone through the rendering process, right? So our ginger syntax that was here has been replaced with the value of aCL_name and the VLAN number has been replaced with the VLAN number, and this is what would be provisioned on.01:19:59Onto the device, ok? So let's go ahead and step into just a little bit of an extra breakdown of how these templates actually function. So these are.01:20:19There's two different types of templates, we have day zero templates, which are gonna be those onboarding templates, like I mentioned for plug and play, and this is should just be a baseline configuration that's that's to get the device up and running and NO more than that. So these are provisioned in a one shot fashion.01:20:37And if anything fails, any of the lines of config fail, it's gonna do a rollback on that configuration, ok? The day end templates, which is more or less what we're looking at with the template that I was provisioning there is known as a provisioning template. These are gonna be your day to day changes that you're making.01:20:54And can be extended further into a concept called composite templates, which we'll look at soon. And these are provisioned in a line by line fashion, so it will go down sequentially, and if it hits a line that will not function, it's gonna air out and it's gonna let you know.01:21:13But everything before it will be provisioned onto the device. So that is just something to be aware of, that's the way that the day in functions, and that's what allows us to have that difference of being able to do the interactive commands and the multi line commands and so on.01:21:30Okay, so how do we create a template? We can create a template within the CLI templates page. We can go into the template editor define our variables and so on. Here's an example of what you might look at for the bind to source. So if I select.01:21:47You know, interface name and then bound to source, I can select the data entry of single select, source inventory, entity interface, and I can select that particular attribute, which is the port name, ok?01:22:03And then in the variable form, what we'll get, you know, when we're provisioning that is the variables that were contained within that, but you can see under interface name is asking me to actually go and select interfaces.01:22:19On that from that device that were pulled in from this bound variable. Okay, so this is again what that would look like during provisioning, so you can see that interface name, they selected gig 101 as that's an available interface.01:22:34On the device based on the the bound variables. Okay, so we we went through this. We'll go to composite templates. So let's say you have a a golden configuration, right? That's like built out, but you want to sort of break it up into bite sized pieces.01:22:52That's effectively the use case for a composite template. The other use case is the ability to provision just those, you know, multiple configurations at one time so we can, what we can do is create a composite template.01:23:11And within that template, you can have multiple other templates that are included and provisioned in a sequential order. So if some config needs to come before or another, then you can sequence the templates.01:23:26To be in that appropriate order. So this is what that would look like. So within the composite template, we can add templates and then those those templates can be sequenced in a certain way. Okay, so what I'd like to do is just jump.01:23:42Quickly back over to, catalyst center and we'll create just a new template, and we'll call this trunks. I'll create.01:23:59Create it here. It's gonna be a ginger template. Again, we'll define switches and hubs, and we'll specify 9300 switch.01:24:17And I just want to take you through just a small example of, you know, some of the, what you can do with something like the ginger language, ok? So, what, what we're trying to do with the purpose of this template is provision.01:24:34Based on our selection, a series of trunk ports. So we'll do what's called a four each. So for each interface that we have in our list of selected interfaces, and we'll use this, this is gonna be a bound variable.01:24:50Okay, and then we'll do end four. So what this is is a is a four block. So we're gonna iterate through our selected interfaces and within this, you can imagine the normal config for.01:25:09A switchboard, it would be something along the lines of interface, you know, gigabit ethernets, 1020, then below you'd have switchboard about trunk.01:25:26And then switchboard trunk allowed VLANs, and then maybe you know something along these lines. So this is the config we're trying to templatize. So for each interface that we select, we want to do an interface command. We want to render out this interface variable, which we're creating for the for.01:25:43For each, we want to render out switchboard mode trunk because this is sequential so it'll run this line to get us into the interface and then it's gonna run switchboard mode trunk to configure it as a trunk, and we'll do switchboard trunk allowed VLANs.01:26:03And this is a good call out, we should do an add command here just in case this is already configured as a trunk. So there are CLI best practices that you should be aware of as the compliance is not gonna work properly if this is not configured correctly.01:26:22So effectively what the compliance is doing in the current state in three.one, we get like role based rule based compliance and so on. In its current state what it's doing is matching against running configuration.01:26:40So things like case sensitivity, abbreviated commands, and so on should definitely be avoided when you're creating templates. And small things like using the add command is gonna make this much, much, more resilient.01:26:55So we'll go ahead and remove this configuration here. We'll do create a new variable for and we will save and commit, and this is gonna allow us to select interfaces. We're gonna be able to dynamically create trunks.01:27:12So I'll go ahead and save and commit. So we can see under variables it says selected interfaces, there's a small X that's because this is a list.01:27:30It knows it's a list because we're doing the for each syntax. So what we're gonna do is turn this into a bound source variable. We're gonna do inventory, interface and what we want to pull in to our.01:27:45Template there is the name of the port, right? Because if we were to say interface and then have that variable of interface next to it, we wanted to render out the actual port name to get us into the interface and config terminal mode. So we'll go ahead and check VLANs.01:28:02And we'll give this a hint, we'll say that this is an example example, we want the format to be in this way. And this is just gonna be a string. So we'll save and commit and we'll quickly run a simulation. So.01:28:20So this is gonna be trunks test and we'll select that device. We can see that it wants us to select some interfaces. So we'll do that here and then under VLANs.01:28:40You know, I can do, basically based off the example and we'll go ahead and run this, and what we'll see is that it has dynamically pulled in the interface name based on the bind variable.01:28:58And dynamically pulled in the VLANs that we want to assign to that switchboard. So this is the kind of thing that you can do with more advanced ginger templating. So I just wanted to demonstrate that. Okay, so really that's gonna wrap up the session today. I'm gonna go ahead and open up a quick slide.01:29:13Slido poll.01:29:33Just so we can get your feedback, and yeah, we'll we'll go ahead and get into some some Q and A here, but this is gonna be the end of the session. So the the survey should be open, feel free to just.01:29:35Had any feedback that you have for us, it's greatly appreciated. And just while we're doing this, I'd say if you have any questions that you want to bring up, you know, regarding the session, feel free to go through those, but we know we're at time, so if you need to drop off, thank you so much for your.01:29:53Time today.01:30:13Absolutely. There was one it made mention to whether or not when should you use the provision device workflow and the provision template workflow? Yeah, so so I can go ahead and take that one. So effectively the concept is simple.01:30:16So if intent is gonna work for your environment.01:30:36You know, having those settings like the server settings, the credentials, and things like that provisioned through the provision process, if that's gonna work for your environment, definitely go with the provision from in inventory process.01:30:39But if you need to circumvent that, I know a lot of folks who are, you know, they're doing, wireless controllers, they're not using network profiles to manage their wireless configuration, but they still want to take advantage of something like templates, then they should go with the provision template option.01:30:56Appreciate that. Awesome. Okay, is there anything else here Isaiah before we wrap up? There are a couple of questions about maybe going to where to.01:31:18Not, they will the the recording will be emailed to the attendees and how they view the recordings after the fact. Yeah, so there there's a community page which will be made available to everyone where the the recording will be populated.01:31:37The recording needs to be vetted internally before it can be posted, so please give us a grace period on that one, but we will get the recording out publicly as soon as we can. Yeah.01:31:55There's more questions, but we probably have to answer them on offline. Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your attendance today. We're gonna go ahead and and end the session here.01:32:12