Connecting Your Environment with Cisco IQ Link Connector

Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our continuation of the Cisco IQ fundamentals series for Cisco IQ link. My name is Mike Jenny.00:09I have the privilege of being a customer success specialist leader here at Cisco.00:20I'd like to also send a warm welcome to our panelists today, Sachin Jackie and Sal. Thanks for being here. They're gonna handle all of your questions as we go through. All right. Hopefully everybody had an opportunity to join the Slido if you haven't already.00:24Please go ahead and grab a snap of the QR code. That's where you're gonna find today's Q and A There's also when you log in there.00:44You'll see a quick poll, and the poll is just to help us kind of understand where you are in your Cisco IQ journey, if you wouldn't mind doing that. And then some housekeeping items 1st and foremost, all microphones have been muted for your comfort and the comfort of others.00:51I mentioned Slido you should see that at the bottom of your screen if you're not into that already. The, the chat feature has been mostly disabled. If you have technical support issues throughout the presentation, please use the chat to talk to the panelists and they can do their best to help you with that. Closed captioning you'll find at the bottom left of your screen if that's of interest.01:08The raise hand feature has been disabled, the reactions have not, so feel free to use those. Today's session is being recorded, transcribed, summarized. You will get a copy of both the recording as well as a link to the the presentation materials after our call today.01:27And then immediately following the call today, you'll get presented with a very brief survey. We very much appreciate the feedback. Thank you to those of you that have been diligent about providing that feedback, some really great information received there. So let's please keep that coming.01:44And then I mentioned this is part of our September Cisco IQ enablement series. So today we're talking specifically about the Cisco IQ link connector. Next week, if you'd like to join us back again, we're gonna be talking about some real world use cases on when you as the IT manager might want to engage with Cisco IQ.02:00To really help prioritize your day and save real time. So it's a little bit more informal of a session, should be a lot of fun. So if you haven't registered for that, please go ahead and use that QR link and we'd love to see you next week. Okay.02:18Today's agenda, again, Cisco IQ link. Last week was pretty light. Today we're probably gonna use the full amount of time. It is pretty PowerPoint heavy, so I do apologize for that in advance. We're gonna try to get over to the demo environment whenever possible. So just gonna keep it interesting.02:34But we're gonna go through Cisco IQ link and introduction, just kind of talk about what it is, why we use it. We'll talk about deployment requirements and best practices. We'll talk about the whole pairing workflow, which can be maybe a little bit confusing if it's the 1st time through it. And then once we have it turned up.02:50We'll talk through some settings and we'll get to probably the most asked about feature is how do I get Catalyst Center into Cisco IQ, and Cisco IQ is IQ link is the answer for that. Now we're not gonna be able to do a live deployment of it. It is, you know, a two to 3 h process, but we will step through the entire workflow.03:07So you can see everything from start to finish.03:27Okay. Now I don't want to make the assumption that everybody here today was here with us the last two weeks. So we do want to go back and do some real quick foundational information just to make sure everybody is is working from the same sheet of music here. So I love this slide because I think it really illustrates on the left the the true chaos.03:31That it is to be an IT manager, right? It's, it's so much more than just managing a set of devices, right?03:51To keep those devices healthy and secure, right? You need to manage a bunch of information streams as well. And just talking about Cisco, we have security advisories, field notices, SR and dS, configuration, best practice guides, all kinds of stuff, right? That you either have to keep track of yourself or.03:57Now you can let Cisco IQ help keep track of those things for you and with you. So what this enables is really for you to move from a posture of reactivity firefighting, right, to a posture of proactivity, right? Taking care of risks and problems before they become problems.04:14So how do we do that? Well, the 1st step is clarity, right? Obviously, I mean, you've heard the outage that you can't protect what you can't see. Okay, so 1st of all, Cisco IQ is gonna help to eliminate those blind spots in your network. Once we have that, then we can move into this.04:31Position of proactive resilience, and this is really where we're gonna surface that risk. We're gonna talk about anything that could cause that unplanned outage and help you do the root cause analysis before it's a problem, right? Before your business feels it, right? And then rapid resolution for anybody that's had the pleasure of working a support case, right? We're not gonna say Cisco IT.04:47Is gonna lend you to never have a a security or a network outage ever again, right? Of course not.05:07But when that happens, whenever we have recognition of a problem, the timeline that goes from problem reco recognition to problem resolution. We want to shrink that timeline. We want to compress that timeline. And I mean at the very face, the very 1st part of that is, well, let's let Cisco IQ open the case for you.05:13Okay, now if you permit it, there are some other features that we'll talk about today that are actually enabled by Cisco IQ link to compress that timeline even farther. So e.g., when you open a TAC case, Cisco IQ can actually go pull that device and pull the initial logs that the Cisco TAC engineer would ask for.05:31Right Saving you time. You're not the bottleneck anymore. Beyond that, if Cisco needs more logging, if Cisco needs to touch that device and, and get some information from it after that initial interaction, right? If you permit it, the Cisco tech engineer will have direct remote access to that device. Again saving time, eliminating that bottleneck, right? We'll get into more of that a little bit later.05:47Here today, but that's what we talk about in rapid resolution is shrinking the timeline from.06:07Problem recognition to problem resolution, right? Now again, I've talked about this the last two sessions. I'll I'll give it a brief overview again. Cisco IQ in and of itself is yours to use free of charge, right? There's NO additional charge for the platform, but what's what the the advanced features of Cisco IQ were unlocked.06:12Based on the type of support you already have. Most of your devices are probably already under support for things like like TAC assistance, e.g..06:32So based on that simplified tier basic standard signature, those will unlock different features and assessments, things that we've talked about the past two weeks, things we'll talk about next week, and then there are some features as well that even if you don't have support.06:41On a device, even if you don't even have basic support, things like security advisories, asset management, field notices, those things are so important, so critical to the the safety of your network, right? Those are things that you'll have access to in Cisco IQ even without a support contract. Not suggesting that's the best path forward. However.06:58And we'll talk about some of that when we get into the Cisco IQ telemetry as well. So enough about that. Let's get into it with Cisco IQ link. So if you were with us the 1st week, we talked pretty high level. We looked at Cisco IQ as an application. We looked around the interface, right? Where everything lived.07:16Last week we're really dug into, well, ok, let's start getting data into Cisco IQ. All right, so once we have device information in there, then the AI can start to use that device or use that device information to help surface those insights and surface best practices and surface risk, right?07:37So last week we talked about a couple of ways to get information into Cisco IQ by way of cloud connectors. So Webex, Meraki, Intersight SD WAN. We also talked about adding service contracts to Cisco IQ. That unlocks the ability to open cases directly from Cisco IQ. That also.07:53Brings in devices that are attached to those contracts, ok? What we're talking about very specifically today is how do we get your on premises.08:13Devices added into Cisco IQ. Okay, and again, one of the most common questions that we get is I have Catalyst Center today managing my large catalyst switch and wireless network. How do I get that information in? So Cisco IQ is gonna be the link for that. Cisco IQ link is gonna be the answer for that rather.08:22So it's gonna be the collection point behind your firewall that will talk to Cisco IQ and provide not only the the asset tracking but as well as the telemetry, the live telemetry of those devices, ok? Now before we get into it too deep, I need to create a clear line of delineation because we're talking about virtual machines and this is.08:38Where it can get a little bit complex, it can get a little bit confusing because on the left hand side, this is what we're talking about today. Cisco IQ link is by nature a cloud application, SaaS application, ok? Cisco IQ link is by nature an on premises application, and the two of those are linked.08:58Now there's also a virtual machine where we're capable of running Cisco IQ itself behind your firewall. Okay, so this think about the federal government, think about customers that need to be air gapped. Customers that can't use cloud at all. That's when we bring the Cisco IQ down to your network as a virtual appliance.09:17Both with and without AI capability, right? Totally up to you. That is available now as of August, that is that is generally available. The one that's coming soon and coming very soon, I can't say exactly when, but wink wink very soon, is the, the hybrid solution or the tethered mode where we have Cisco I.09:36You itself living on premises behind your firewall, but you're receiving updates.09:55From it. Okay. Hopefully I didn't lose too much there. But what we're talking about today very specifically when we say the virtual machine is the Cisco IQ link connector, not the IQ virtual appliance. All right. Hopefully provided some clarity there. So this slide I think does a lot of work for us.10:01And in a number of ways. So if you're familiar with CX Cloud, if you're coming from CX cloud, you've of course heard of CX agent, maybe you have CSPC. These are the collectors we've used in the past, ok? Those collectors are not going to be around much longer, there hasn't been any announcement on official dates for those yet, but the writing is on the wall, we're moving to c.10:21Cisco link, right? Cisco IQ link is gonna be the path forward. That's not to panic anybody. You don't need to go out and you know do anything today, but you definitely need to be making plans to migrate from CX agent from CSBC in favor of Cisco IQ link, right? And the big reason is telemetry.10:41Okay, Cisco IQ link collects additional and deeper telemetry that allows us to build different assessments within Cisco IQ to drive different, different outcomes and surface different risks. But we'll talk about that you see across the top of the screen here. So different different assessments, different features in Cisco IQ, and at the very top.11:01You see basic standard and above as we go from left to right, it generally.11:20Generally correlates to the different features that are available at those different tiers of support. Now I mentioned like security advisories, last day of support field notices, those things are available even without a support contract, ok? But as we get into the more.11:25Advanced features, the deeper AI insights, the AI next best step, best practice kind of thing. That's whenever we're gonna be talking about the the standard and above. We'll get into that a little bit more next week on some of the different assessments. But the takeaway from this slide is that CX agents CSPC are eventually going away in favor.11:42Cisco IQ link.12:02Okay, not a panic today, but we need to be planning in that direction. Okay. All right, let's talk deployments. So this is gonna make some of you very happy. We are on currently version one.two to five and as of this version, we've officially.12:03Added Nutanix to our supported list of hypervisors. So, very exciting there. Also in the bottom left corner, more good news. So we still have the three tiers of sizes for the virtual machine, but all of the stats across all three of those tiers have dropped.12:22So VCPU, VRAM, virtual hard drive. All of it has has reduced in size. Now, I know there's a lot going on in this slide. This is a, I think just a great reference slide. In the middle, what we're looking at is what you need to take to your firewall team. Hey, I need these ports open in this direction. You'll see that these are very common ports and.12:40Protocols so you shouldn't need to have, you know.13:00Great in depth, you know, conversations with the firewall team to explain why these are needed, ok? And it's all very well documented, but you do need to make sure 2nd from the bottom is probably the most important one and also the hardest to read. You do need to make sure that Cisco acu Link can hit those different fqdns.13:03Because that's where Cisco IQ is gonna be hosted, ok? Assuming we're using the SAS in the cloud. Alright, I know we're moving kind of quick, but we've got a lot to get to. If you have questions as we're going, please remember to put those in the Q and A in our our wonderful panelists tool. Be happy to help there.13:23Okay, IP and host name, pretty straightforward, right? We are using IPV four. IPV six is not supported yet. DHCP is not supported at all. We do have DNS requirements. We do need to have an A record as well as a point of record, ok? The A record for name to IP, the pointer record for IP to name. Those do get checked as part of the configuration proc.13:42Process or the deployment process. So you, you do need to make sure that those are in there and accurate.14:02Also, the fully qualified domain domain name does need to be in lowercase and comply with the RFC 1123. Okay, and if for some reason that fails, you will find it and I'll I'll point this out a little bit later when we get to that step.14:07It will fail the the installation process, ok, if DNS doesn't work. All right, Installation and pairing. Okay, the next it's everybody take a deep breath. There, there are a lot of slides, ok? We're gonna move through them pretty quickly, we're gonna.14:23Keep you on track and on, you know, where we are in the process that I'll call out here.14:43As we get into step number one, we're gonna start in Cisco IQ, ok? Now the Cisco IQ demo lab that I have here, I'm gonna pull it up as much as possible because I think live demo is a lot more interesting, but I will say the demo lab that we have access to here is view only. It doesn't have the.14:49The admin features, ok? So the idea being that we want this to be the, you know, the least common denominator, everybody's experience whether you're an admin or not.15:08But the layout is the same, of course. So what we see over here in the slides, I'd like to show in the demo lab as much as possible. So this is our landing page, whether you're an admin or not. And when we come in and you know we've talked about this the last few sessions where all these things live, but just for the sake of anybody that's joining us for the 1st time.15:16If you go into home and system settings.15:36This is where we're gonna find our connectors. Now, if you're an admin, you have some additional features over here, which you're kind of out of scope for today's discussion, but Cisco IT link is what we're looking for, what we're gonna be looking at. Last week we talked about the cloud connectors at the top here. If you still have the old collectors CX CSPC CX agent, you'll see them connected to the bottom.15:39But if you don't have a Cisco IQ link yet, alright, that's where we're coming in on the slide where here, ok? So you'll have the option to add a Cisco IQ link. All right.15:58This slide is a little bit dated. I, I will say, we're a couple of revisions behind, so apologies for that, but functionally, it's gonna be the same thing. The 1st thing it's gonna ask you to do is to pick a region, right? So we're talking basically the Americas, EMEA, APJC.16:14And that's gonna tell Cisco IQ link where it needs to look to find your Cisco IQ instance, right? So basically you're gonna pick a hypervisor, you're gonna pick the latest version, more often than not, I don't know why you wouldn't, right? And then we'll hit, we'll hit next to go to the download.16:29Alternatively, if you look at the left hand side of the screen at the bottom where it says package catalog and yours might say software catalog, you can alternatively go into the catalog and find the Cisco IQ link installer from there. Same process, we're gonna go to the installation package.16:47We'll pick a hypervisor, we'll pick a version, and you can download it from there. Okay, now at the bottom of that same screen, we have a checkbox that says I'm ready.17:04To do the pairing, alright? I'm gonna show you that you can proceed, even though you haven't deployed Cisco IQ yet, but in two steps, you're gonna be stopped because we need information from Cisco IQ link, ok? But just to show you that you can, right? 1st step in here we just did, 2nd step of Cisco IQ link deployment from the Cisco IQ.17:19We're gonna give it a friendly name. It doesn't necessarily have to be the FQDN.17:39Okay, and then step number three, this is the really the the important part with the the pairing. We're gonna come to a step in the Cisco IQ link deployment where it's gonna give us the device ID and claim code, ok? So from the Cisco IQ side, this is where we're gonna have to stop for now.17:44All right, so as we get into the end of step number one of the workflow, we're going to assume that you've worked with your data center team or whoever manages your hypervisor that can deploy that OVA or the targetzy or whatever it is.18:02It's been deployed, it's ready for configuration, you are consoled into it, ok? So that's the end of workflow step number one. And I want to call attention to the top right just to provide some additional clarity, so you can see that we're consoled into the Cisco IQ link virtual machine.18:18Okay, that navigation is gonna change as we go through the installation process. We're gonna be, we're gonna start in the console. We're gonna come over to a Cisco IQ link web app installer, ok? It's the one and only time you're gonna touch that. We'll come back to Cisco IQ, then we'll come back to Cisco IQ link.18:34Okay, I know that sounds like a lot. It kind of is a lot, but that's why we put that in there. That's why that navigation box exists, ok? So if you, if we find yourself on a step and don't understand or don't recall where that step is carried out, ok? We'll call out those changes as we get to them.18:55Alright, so step number two in the workflow, we've deployed the image, now we need to configure the network, ok? So you're gonna get a s a screen very much like this. And actually I blew over this really quick. The the default credentials.19:12Is admin admin all lowercase. Pretty straightforward there. Username, admin password admin, all overcase. All right. Then you're gonna come into the main configuration page here. We haven't really deployed Cisco IT link yet. Now we're just.19:27Adding network access to it, ok? So you're generally gonna do option number one here. You're gonna step through a configuration, a series of configuration steps, IP address, subnet masks gateway, NTP servers definitely need to make sure that you enter at least one NTP server, all of your DNS information.19:43Right, so on and so forth, ok? Once you have all of that entered, it's also going to ask if you want to change the default admin password. You could change it now if you like. You can change it after the fact if you prefer to just get through the, the deployment here.20:03Okay, either way, it's gonna ask you to confirm the the network configuration. You're gonna hit yes, and now it's time for a quick coffee break, ok? It's gonna go through, you'll see the dots, you'll start to see check marks, pile up, and roughly ten to 15 min, you'll see the network configuration is complete.20:19Right, so you'll see something like what you see at the top here with the check marks, you'll hit enter to continue. Now here's where it gets a little bit weird and I I apologize I don't have a great screenshot of it, but if you come back to the initial login screen, I want to draw your attention to the top where it says system status.20:37Cisco IQ on prem not configured. Once you've gone through the configuration process, that message is going to change. So then it'll say Cisco IQ on prem, and that's where we get ready to install and the bottom image here, ok? It's also going to provide you a web link to a small web app.20:55That lives on the Cisco IQ link server, it's not the admin panel, but it's just a small web app that helps do the installation Cisco IQ, ok? It's just HTTPS.21:15In the host name. Okay, that's all it is. Pretty straightforward I know it's grayed out here unfortunately, but ok, so we're still in the console and and now we're really kind of done in the console, assuming everything went well. All right.21:26So you'll see our navigation bar at the top changed. We're now in the web app. Okay, this is the web installer that lives on Cisco IQ or Cisco IQ link excuse me. And again, this is the one and only time you're really gonna have to come into this little web application, ok?21:42And this is just gonna help the pairing, and this is gonna build the actual architecture of the Cisco IQ link server, right? So pretty straightforward. Just a few next, ok? The 1st step here was omitted that's talking about web proxy if you need to use that. Second step here is where we get the device ID and claim code.21:57Right? One important thing to take note of here, the device ID and claim code expire every 5 min. They do refresh, so you don't need to panic about that, but they do expire every 5 min. So you'll need to copy both of these. We're gonna pop back over.22:16To Cisco IQ, and recall this is where we talked about the checkbox, then you're ready to proceed forward. Again, we're gonna give it a name, and then we're gonna put in the device ID and claim code. Okay, this is what links Cisco IQ to your Cisco IQ link.22:31Alright, alright so moving back to the Cisco IQ link web installer, right? Step number three, once that connection's successful, we're gonna go and do a DNS check, just make sure all of that looks good. Because again, if there's a problem with DNS.22:48The following installer is gonna fail, ok, when we get to the Kubernetes. Now speaking of Kubernetes, this is the part that makes people scratch their heads a little bit. There is an internal network requirement, and you're gonna see it's a/twenty address. If you don't know what that means, it's a big address pool. It it and there's NO other way around it, NO other way to say it.23:07The internal network IP address, I don't recall off the top of my head, but I do know that that the default works for most people, but if you happen to see that it's it's overlapping with something on your internal network, you know, of course, please feel free to or please go ahead and change this to a different range.23:28But again it works by default for for most customers. Okay, and then when you hit next, we're gonna kick off the actual installer, right? So now the server has all the information it needs to build out your Cisco IQ link. Alright, now where I mentioned before you were on a coffee break, now you're probably on a lunch break, so this might be the better part of it.23:44Hour, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more.24:03But as long as you connected to the web installer using the host name, once this is complete, then you should come to our final step here, which is the login for Cisco IQ link. Okay.24:07One thing I want to point out before we move forward, if you're familiar with Cisco IQ, and I'll pop this back up, this is our Cisco IQ demo lab, right? Cisco IQ, in the top left, we have Cisco logo and just IQ. When we're in Cisco IQ link, just to keep things separate.24:24You'll see the word Cisco IQ link, ok? You also get the version, you'll see this is actually a couple rows behind, and that's fine. Okay, but again admin admin unless you changed it during the the configuration process, and then we'll use whatever you used for.24:43For that ok alright so now we're in Cisco IQ link. All right? Remember we have in the top left Cisco IQ link. So this will be the page like in Cisco IQ, you have a launchpad page, kind of the default landing page in Cisco iqq.24:58Q link you have the same, some things you might want to do right away and honestly we recommend at least a few of these. But some things you can do right away is we're gonna go into home and system configuration and I'm gonna pull up another lab instance here. This one is a little bit more limited, but it can at least show the.25:18What we're getting at. So we're gonna go home and system settings, ok. And we're gonna go down to system configuration. We get a lot of questions about, hey, can I use single sign on? Absolutely you can. Can I, you know, use signed certificates? Absolutely can and absolutely.25:37You should, right? So Cisco IQ link by default uses a self signed certificate.25:57If you want to do syslog servers I mean it's all in here. You change your NTP servers, ok? The one thing that's not in here, and it's not in local identity or access in access is the admin password. So if you wanna update the admin password, that's where we'll need.26:01I'm gonna come forward a step here in the managing passwords. You're actually gonna need to go into the profile, ok? This is a change from an older version of Cisco IQ link, but whenever you're in the Cisco IQ link as the admin, right? Even after you have SSO enabled, we can still change the admin password.26:18We'll want to be logged in as the local admin, we'll come into the profile and where it has user security. We'll go into the manage. Okay, this is where you can set or reset or, well, this is where you can reset the password. You need to know, of course, the existing password, and then you can set the new password.26:38Based on the complexity requirements there. Also highly, highly recommend that you set security questions. So you have a set of five security questions that you can fill out here. These will of course be the challenge questions if you forget the administrative password.26:58Right, so it is not case sensitive so you can keep that in mind, so that's fine, ok? So that is dealing with the admin credentials. Okay, so again the prerequisites, obviously you need to be an administrator, you need to be signed in as administrator.27:13You're logged into Cisco IT link obviously and then you know the current password. Okay, there is a lockout that I skipped over. There is a lockout period, so three attempts, there is a lockout of 60 min.27:30Pretty, pretty standard fair there. All right. Now, let's get to it. One of the most asked questions about Cisco IQ is how do we add catalyst center, right? Because this is more than likely the reason that you're adding Cisco IQ link.27:46Alright, so if we come back to, let me pull this back up and step back just as midget here. So back to the landing page.28:03Will come into home and system settings and connection management is where we wouldn't be. So connection management is going to allow you to add a catalyst center or multiple catalyst centers. It's also going to let you add devices directly. So if you have a standalone catalyst switch.28:20Absolutely you can add it as a standalone device. Okay, we're gonna get telemetry from both places. If you have Catalyst Center, this is really one of those, you know, efficiencies where if you have multiple catalyst devices already connected to Catalyst Center, well then you're just adding one device, you're adding one catalyst center.28:40Right, as opposed to adding a whole host of devices. So quite so either way, but in either case, we're gonna have to start in the credentials tab up here, right? So the general process is gonna be we're gonna create a credential set for Cisco IQ link to use, and then we're going to apply that credential set to whatever we're connecting to.28:56Be it catalyst center or be it a direct device, ok? Now, you can use the same credential set for different devices, of course, if they share that credential set.29:17Or you can create different credential sets if you use different credential sets for San Jose versus RTP versus New York, however you need to do it. It's pretty flexible that way. And there's different kinds of connections that we'll, we'll look at here in just a moment, ok? One question that we get quite a bit is how does Catalyst Center talk.29:26Cisco IQ link.29:46So we'll use this default credential set for the 1st connection to Catalyst Center and then we'll actually use API connectivity between Cisco acu Link and catalyst center. So we're not gonna keep sending your, your credentials over the network here. But in any case to add credentials, again, we're in the credentials area. You can see the sets that are already created.29:47Right, so we can go enter manually, we'll give it give it a name just so you can keep track of it, the type of connectivity. Remember catalyst center, we're gonna web to it 1st, so it's gonna just be an HTTPS.30:07Versus your devices are probably using SNMP V two hopefully V three, hopefully not telnet. But the option is there. I mean that that is still a thing. Alright, and then whatever you choose, then we have different options, right? So filling in credentials filling community strings, right? So on and so forth.30:22And then the next step, it's gonna talk about the IP range for those different things, ok? So that's credential sets. We need that for both catalyst center as well as direct connected devices. So for Catalyst Center specifically, we're gonna go into connection methods and Catalyst Center with the plus.30:41We'll give it the IP address or host name either way, and we'll feed it the credential set. That's it. That's how we connect Catalyst Center to Cisco IQ link. Now, a couple of caveats with connecting catalyst center. Fast forward here just a moment. The initial connection time, we talked, well we talked about how to connect.31:01That does need to be secure HTTPS credential set.31:21But as far as how long it takes to synchronize devices, once you've made that connection, there's roughly 75 min again, plus or minus, right? If you don't see devices after 2 h, you might want to open a support case on that. Also, a single Cisco IQ link can support up to 20 catalyst centers.31:24Right? And that's something that we need to be really clear about. So you could have multiple catalyst centers on a Cisco IQ link. You could have multiple Cisco IQ links on a single Cisco IQ instance. You cannot have the same Cisco IQ link on multiple Cisco IQ.31:43Accounts, ok? Alright, and that's it. That's it for catalyst center. Pretty straightforward. So that synchronization will start to synchronization will start to happen. The telemetry will start to get pulled. We'll talk about the collection schedule in just a minute here, but then you'll see much like we have in the.32:02If we go back in the demo space here, you'll see that we have a catalyst center already connected, ok, and they'll start to stack up down here. All right, we'll talk about the scheduling in just a second, but the other thing that we can do with Cisco IQ link is add devices manually or I'm sorry add add devices directly.32:20We can do that in one of two ways. The original way we had was by manual IP address. The newest one that we have is by network scan, so we'll look at both of those very briefly. Okay, so again, we're gonna create the credential set 1st cause we'll get asked for that.32:36So we're gonna go in and specify manual, so two ways to do it manually. The easier the two is probably to upload a file. So you can download the template. We talked about it this a little bit last week where you have a template you can download and fill out and put back in the system. Very much the same concept here.32:51So we'll download the template, we'll fill it out with IP information, ok, credential set. Or we could specify the devices directly. If you just have a few, right? You can put a few in here. You can use wildcards as well for that, ok? So that's manual specification.33:07And then network scan again is a newer feature. It's actually pretty exciting. So we have three options in here so we can specify a range, right? So if you have a particular management subnet that I you know most people do, you can put the the start and the end in there and Cisco IQ link will go ping that range of IPs and try to log in using the.33:24Credentials you provided.33:44Right, we're gonna set a default frequency and time if you'd like, right? And then just connect assets and let it run. Alternatively, and very interestingly, we do have the option now to look for devices by CDP and or LLDP. You can have both of them turned on, you can have one or the other.33:45Right, again, we're gonna give it a name and we're gonna give it a seed IP address. So where should Cisco IQ link start? Now, very important if you run a very large network, you want to keep the hop count low, like one or two low, because this is gonna start to build out a web.34:06Of CDP, LLDP queries, right? And that gets pretty unruley pretty quick. You have a smaller network, that's probably fine to have a little bit larger hop count, but for a larger network, you definitely want to keep that smaller. And then from a scheduling perspective, same deal, right? We can set the frequency, we can set the time.34:21On that. And then the same we have file upload option. Again, we can download the template fill out the template, dump the template back in, go ahead and connect. All right, so that was direct devices. Pardon me while I fast forward here.34:37Again, the credential sets, we talked about scan. Perfect. Alright, sorry for the fast forwarding. Let's talk about.34:57Inventory. So once you have your devices directly connected or your catalyst center connected, when you come back to the main page, right? Again, we can always click on the top left to get back to the main page of where you're at back to the launch pad.35:14Okay, we're gonna again come back into home and probably shouldn't gone back quite so far. The inventory tab of connection management. Okay, I'll show you in Cisco IQ in just a few minutes where you can start to see these devices accumulate and how you can find them very specifically.35:32But once you start to receive telemetry from devices, you know, we'll start to see them populated here and then we'll get a green check mark, just to show you that that connection is good and healthy. Okay, so this coming back.35:51And the scheduling piece. Let's go take a quick look at that. So again, we're under connection management and connections this time. And when you go into the scheduling, we can set specific times for the scheduled discovery and the scheduled inventory collection.36:06Okay. All right. Perfect. Now, Cisco IQ link will auto update. You can control that. You can, you can allow the update to happen automatically. By default, I believe the current time is it.36:25Is one day from, from version publication to update.36:45So you can schedule it during a maintenance window. Most of you will probably opt to do that. But if you don't want to, you know, hassle with that, you can let it auto update on its own. And the other thing I want to show you, and this is not something I can show you live unfortunately in our demo lab environment, I mentioned at the top of the call.36:49Compressing the timeline, right? The rapid resolution and those couple of things that if you permit it, right? So these are things that you can turn on or off based on your comfort level, based on your security needs. The top one is talking about when you open a tech case, having Cisco IT go and pull that device for the initial log set.37:08So it can go grab those logs and and literally attach them to the case on your behalf, right? Saves a lot of time, right? If you've ever worked attack case. But if that's maybe a little bit too much for your security posture, that's fine. You can turn that off. And then 2nd piece here is once you're in the active TAC case and the TAC engineer needs additional logging.37:28Traditionally they'd have to email you, hey grab grab me this set of logs and and you know upload it to the case. Well, now if you permit it, they can go and grab that information on your behalf directly, ok? So again, if that's not something that jives with your security policy, please go ahead and and feel free to turn that off. But that's gonna be under the Cisco IQ, the system settings, device connectors where we.37:46We spent quite a bit of time now.38:06But you'll have that option to turn those two features on or off. Alright, going back to our presentation. Now, before we start to close things down here, I want to show a few things in Cisco IQ itself.38:08Okay, sorry to bounce around here. Right, so we've stepped through the whole process of obviously not the whole thing live, but the whole process to deploy Cisco IQ link. We saw that there's inventory coming into Cisco IQ link, which means there should be inventory that's now synchronizing into Cisco IQ.38:27Okay, so once you have a a Cisco IQ link connected, you'll see it in the data connectors. Again, this is the viewer view. This is not the admin view, so if you see some additional features over here, don't don't worry. That's, that's the admin view. But let's go back just to level set.38:43We're all the way back to the launchpad here. All right, so when we talk about devices, what it's gonna show up in the assets and inventory. Okay, so we can either go into the assets module here. We can go into home modules, assets here, either way.39:00Okay, we'll always come to the overview page, but I'm more interested right now in showing you the inventory. Okay, we've looked at this the past couple of sessions, but just embarrass some highlighting here. So a couple of things to point out. So anytime that you come to a table like this.39:18They're all customizable, so if you want to see more or less columns, if you want to move columns, if you want to condense or expand between the rows, you can absolutely do any of that through the little gear icon over here.39:38Okay, one of the things that I added before our call today was the data source. So we want to see where the information's coming from, Cisco IQ link from Webex, from Meraki, so on and so forth, right? As well as the telemetry status, because if we're not receiving telemetry, we're kind of limited on what we can do with a device.39:50Okay, so so we have that, but then also the filters. We have a lot of filters, ok? So one of the ones that I want to show you very specifically in relation to what we did today is the data source. So I mentioned we can look and see what's coming in specifically from Cisco IQ and even more specifically what's coming from.40:09Very specific Cisco IQ instances, right? We can have multiple. Now in our demo lab, we just have the one here so we can say Cisco IQ link, ok? And then we can see a list of devices coming in by way of our Cisco IQ link. All right.40:28Cool. Now, before we wrap up, just a few things I want to point out for you. There's a lot that goes into Cisco IQ link, obviously, I mean we move pretty quickly to get through all the content, but as you go through any of those steps, if you have a problem, please open a case. Please reach out.40:50For support. It's always available to you. You hit the question mark at the bottom of the the list here. Report an issue, please reach out, right? That's, that's the most important thing. If you have a question, let's get that answered for you. Along those same lines, a couple of things that it's worth taking a look at. So 1st of all, the getting started guide.41:10If you click on that, it's gonna take you to a central repository of a lot of great information. So Cisco IQ you'll see along the top here, right? Anything related to Cisco IQ, anything Cisco IQ link, the virtual appliance which we didn't talk about today and supported product list that we we've kind of skirted around. Some devices are legitimately.41:31Not yet supported on Cisco IQ.41:51Right, so if you want to see a list of supported products, you can get it there. And then an evergrowing list of frequently asked questions. It's a great resource for learning, right? Even just kind of perusing, even if you, if you don't have a specific issue, ok? Well, couple things I'm gonna show you in Cisco IQ link, and these are the same for Cisco IQ as well.41:53We have a what's new, right? So Cisco IQ itself is a very agile platform. There's very fast development and deployment cycles. So frequently you know even each month you're gonna see new features show up, so we have a what's new, we have a release notes for different versions and the getting started guide.42:13Is what I want to really highlight for you here. The getting started guide for Cisco IQ Link has almost verbatim what we talked about in today's session, ok? Really interesting question we got from the audience last week was about telemetry very specifically. So, you know, what does Cisco IQ Link actually collect?42:31From catalyst center. So one recent add is this telemetry commands, so I'll pull up your risks real quick. So I talked about Cisco IQ link talking to catalyst center via API after we make that initial connection, right? So these are the different APIs that it's going to use.42:50And then if you have, additional commands based on the product set, ok? So this is how we interact with different products from our supported product family. And then direct connection for things that are on Cisco IQ link but not behind Cisco Catalyst Center, right? So there.43:05Different command sets that we use to capture telemetry for those devices.43:25Okay, and I really mentioned this because there was a question about it last week and wanted to make sure that you all had that information. The last thing that I'm going to point out, if we go back, let's close this. We'll go back to our Cisco IQ.43:30Is this guy, our learning videos. This is actually a newer feature in the list here and it's really, it's got small bite sized videos of pretty much any feature that you can imagine in Cisco IQ, so it's part of our Cisco community pages.43:47There are curated video lists. There are individual videos that you can go through, so if you have questions about a particular feature, you want to learn more about, you know, our, you know, name your feature device hardening, security advisories, any additional features chances are there's a already a video about that.44:03Okay. All right. And the very last thing I'm gonna mention to you from Cisco IQ, and I promise you this is not a sales call, but we've gotten this question as well. I mentioned that if you're on the basic level, I mentioned there is a quick start available, so if you want to get the standard signature field.44:22Features unlocked or Cisco IQ for your usage, but you're on basic. There is a bridge contract available to you. I'm not gonna get into the details of it, but you can certainly go into the Cisco support peers and learn more and you'll be directed to the sales community to help you with that.44:42All right. Okay, that was a lot. We're sure, so let's bring it all home here. Couple more resources for you. 1st of all, this is the 3rd, today is the 3rd of the four part series.45:01I would love to have you back next week where we actually talk about some real use cases. We're gonna look at some, some, I mean fake but interesting emails that you might see pop up in the IT manager's inbox and how Cisco IT can help you save real time by helping to correlate and collate the information that you need to quickly address.45:20Your internal stakeholders and their their queries, ok? I mentioned Cisco IQ resources, the, the top left, you'll have basically a landing page for all of our documentation. So if you want to use that one or if there's something more specific, you'd like to learn about how we use AI.45:39In the whole process, talking about our AI transparency policy, that's great read. All right. And then after the call, like I mentioned, you're gonna get a survey, very quick survey, if you wouldn't mind providing that feedback, once you submit the survey, you'll get forwarded to our Cisco communities page where we haven't asked me anything site set up where you can ask additional.45:57Questions, that's also where you're gonna find a copy of today's recording as well as the presentation materials, ok? You'll also you will be redirected there after the call today, but if you want to grab a shot of that QR code, you can go there directly.46:17And while you're at the Cisco community site, I'd also like to call your attention to the other Cisco expert insights series and global webinars that are available. If you go to the top in the webinars and events, and then down to view all webinars and events, and I like to put it in the calendar view personally, do how you like, but it definitely covers all of our architectures, it covers.46:31Many global time zones.46:51At least a dozen different languages. We do refresh that content pretty regularly. All of it is free. All of it is free, but registration is required. All right. So with that, I'd like to thank you for spending part of your day with us. Again, before you go, I'd love to have some feedback if you wouldn't mind filling out the survey for us.46:53One of which again is a free text field. If you'd like to be contacted by customer success to help with your Cisco IQ journey, please identify that.47:13And then once you close that survey, you'll get redirected to where you'll find today's recording and presentation Carols in the next 48 h. So that would love to see you again next week, but for now, wish you a pleasant day and good health, and we'll talk soon. Thank you.47:21