Latest and greatest of Cisco NSO 6

Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for.00:10Taking the time to join the new series on network services orchestration. We have three sessions on this series. Today's the 1st one. The following ones will be on the, on, upcoming ones will be a week later. But the 1st session is on.00:15You know latest and greatest of NSO features in six.six. We have our presenters George, Robert and Risban, who's gonna walk you through the, you know, latest walk you through on this session. If you have any questions, please feel free to raise your hand and David or I will.00:35Unmute you for you so you could speak up or, you know, you can leverage the chat window to post your question there and our panelists will will help answer your questions.00:55With that George, please go ahead all yours. Thank you so much. Can you hear me well, right? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so thank you so much and thank you everyone for coming today.01:08My name is George Mitter. I am customer success specialist here for cross domain automation in Cisco. If you have never heard about customer success or you have never been in contact with one, please let me know. You will have our contacts in the end and you can always reach out. Our goal is to always help you.01:24To adopt the product, ok? And today is a session that I have been presenting in Cisco live. I've made some modifications that I kept the same templates and it's all about NSO and how it has evolved within the years, right? So that's why we.01:43We call it latest and greatest of NSO features.02:04So, and starting exactly with that. So NSO over the years, we know that NSO started in 2014, and then even in 2024 we celebrated the ten anniversary of the tool.02:08And if I've been using the tool for for a long time or for some time, there are some keywords that you have been seeing, right? Like check sync sync from sync to the fact that NSO is a multi vendor solution, compliance reports, device templates et cetera.02:26And you have been wondering, ok, so what has changed? Because if I hear about NSO five years ago, if I hear about NSO today, I still hear these words, right? And this is because these words are part of the core of the solution. The sync from sync to is still the way that we interact with the.02:45DP and the devices when they, when they are out of sync. So how this is how we still make this device management ok but in all or or in a lot of other features we evolved e.g. in high availability, we have a new way of doing it in compliance reports.03:05It's completely revamped in what regards to the web UI, in what regards to how does it work? So, and in this presentation we will go through it, alright? Not only on the features that have been revamped and have evolved, but as well on the new.03:25Tips and tricks that we have developed over the years and implemented in the solution, ok? Some things that are not considered the feature, but it's something that.03:46That yeah, it was implemented and and it's good for usage. So what's in the agenda for today? It's it's all about this. So you are in a version of NSO, you wanna go to a new version and you want you want to know.03:57What are the changes that, that you will have from one to another? So I want to show you today as part of this agenda, how can you identify these changes, ok? So from the version you are to the version you wanna go, so you can find.04:14Anything that will be changing, anything that will be new, but as well anything that can be or not incompatible. We will go through the documentation framework, something that the customers told us in the past that they wanted a better documentation, a place to change to to look at it.04:31AI, so of course every presentation now and these days have AI word in it.04:51We will go to in the 3rd topic to the modernized web UI. It's a big change that we are doing in NSO six.X, ok? So you will find that today I'll be showing you NSO six.six, but this web modernized web UI have been happening.04:57All over these six.X versions, ok? So in six.one, we have done some changes, six.two other changes, six.three other changes and six.seven that is coming in in the in the coming months, it will have more changes for the web UI.05:17We will have as well and we will talk about new features and enhancements, ok? And this agenda is not something that will be very strict, ok? I couldn't put here like every feature or enhancement that I will speak about because otherwise we will go with an agenda like this and.05:36I just summarized it into these four topics, but it will not be like something that we will go straight one after the other. Okay, we'll be jumping from top from one topic to another and you will understand how the session goes through.05:55So, but to keep a little bit of the flow, identify a little bit here the changes, how can you do it? So we have a link, the developer.cisco.com, this complex one. I don't want to memorize it because I will show you how can you get into it very easily. But basically.06:11Using this link that now you can, you can see from the release that you are with the release that you are going to. So e.g., from six.one that was released back in 2023 to six.six.three, how many and what are the changes that were developed between?06:30And we are when we are looking for this.06:51Two years and something because 2026 didn't ended yet. We are looking already at 1385 changes. Of course, and just to, to hear to give some a little bit of triangularity here, I will not speak about the 1300.06:5485 changes during this 1 h and out.07:14So I just picked up some that I felt that they were more important to me or for the way of how we operate or how do we work in terms of engineering with NSO and I will show them, ok? Of course, if you have any question about any of the changes that.07:18I am not putting here today in practice, you can always reach out to me or to any of of my colleagues. So when you click on it, to see the changes between two versions, this is what you will find, right?07:37So let me just put here some, some laser pointer to make it easier for me to flag what I'm speaking about. So when you select the two versions, you will be able to see how many entries are we speaking about.07:54It should change between between versions and then you can export these changes to CSV and as well. You can see what type you can put it by kind or component. So when when we say by kind, it's because.08:09These changes are not all new features, ok? Some are corrections, some are just notice of deprecated elements, others are enhancements, others were put because of security measures and et cetera etc. So if you want instead of.08:28Just.08:48Checking, or seeing everything else, you can just see, ok, is there any any security improvement from the version that I'm going to the next one because was that, was there some breach discovered and I need to patch my NSO, so you can directly go into that and just.08:49Just just filter by the security parts.09:08We do the same for the neds, so you can, you can do this, this search not only for the NSO versions but for the neds, network element drivers, right? So the network element drivers, just to give a recap and for someone that might be new, they are.09:13This and we usually give this analogy, right? So I have the platforms, I have these mouse and how can they work with with the computer, right? Because the computer have a driver. So in NSO, we use this this this analogy as well. So we use these drivers.09:33Which are the neds that will tell NSO what is the the intent which will translate your intent to what the device understands, ok? So it works.09:52In an analogy like a computer driver. So for the neds, you just choose your NED, you choose the version you are coming from, the version you are going to, and then you can do the search and get the changes. So what are the incompatible nodes that you will have from one version to another?10:07What are the corrections that that we have implemented and what are the enhancements that we did put into?10:27Okay. Documentation framework. So it's it's new. So now everything related to NSO documentation, you can go to NSO docs.cisco.com and you'll be able to search from there.10:33Anything about the solution. And when I say anything, we even included an AI integration so with the git book help, so you can change within the within within the the docs without having to scroll on it, you'll be able to spot very quickly where the subject that you are.10:51Targeting is, is configured and better than speaking about it is to to show it, right? So I'm just putting out my screen here that does have NSO but it's not what I want to show now. So for now I'm going with the NSO docs, not cisco.com.11:12I bet you can see it. If you don't just put it in the chat and we'll try to assist you. So we have here the NSO documentation website. You'll have this ask window here that you can click and you can put here your questions, right? So you can put here.11:31E.g., how, what are the steps to do local installation, install installation of NSO and we can send.11:51And let's see if it will return what are the steps that we need to do. So it says it found something in the NSO installation section and if we wanna, if we wanna find, find more, we can go for it and.12:07We can quick keep asking questions. Like e.g., what are the exact local installation steps? We know that in the AI, not everything is predictable, so when we do this type of questions, sometimes we get answers that are not what we are, what we are expecting.12:23But.12:43You can see here that if you keep going, you can even ask things like how to build your service, to build a template service and and it will search as well in the documentation and every time it search, not only the the steps will be demonstrated.12:44To in the in the right side of the screen and this is what I was expecting in the previous one that was working before, but it's fine.13:04And, and you will have here the search with the number of results that that can happen. And if you click on it, you'll be able to spot very quickly where in the documentation these words or AI found that these words were relevant, ok? This would happen.13:13The same e.g. with the installation one, so if we click on the view, you can see here where is the NSO or where did this search happen in the documentation?13:32So other things besides, besides this with AI that I wanted to show you here in the documentation that we have is as well a very crucial place that I found that we have released in the website. And for me it's very important the release info, right?13:45So if you come, if you come here and there is a big warning here saying that the all the dates are tentative, ok? So we can scroll down and we can see the release dates of our solutions, right? So you can see here.14:05That you have, e.g., today we are in March and I think we are not yet. Yeah, we are in 18. So yesterday there, there was supposed to have launched the NSO.14:20Six.five.eight, ok? So you can see here the information so if you are in NSO six.five, you know that there is a new patch that just came out, six.five.eight supposedly, and you can upgrade to it if you see that the the changes and now you can do.14:37The exercise of using the website and checking the changes.14:56If if they make sense for you and this doesn't stop here. We can see here that we have the next patch for six.six.five in in May, and most important, we will have our next long term release NSO six.seven coming in late April.15:02Okay.15:21This is always tentative, I I was looking here, e.g., we don't have here, but usually when we cannot comply with the date because e.g., there was some tests done that show that there was some bug or some bug was discovered just right after the version was posted and.15:22So we fall back and and we postpone the release date of the version, ok? But these keep in mind, these are tentative dates, so if you plan ahead or if you are planning ahead to upgrade your NSO, you can already see when these releases are supposed to come out, ok? And the big one that everyone will be talking about.15:42But it will be six out seven because, you know, long term releases are the ones that have more support in time and it will be for sure.16:02One of the next ones to be advised to go to. So the other thing and the last one I want to show you here on the, on the, on the interface of the, of the documentation is the software life cycle support management statements. Okay, so if you.16:12Scroll down, a lot of times.16:32You might be wondering when does your release gets out of support or when should I upgrade or start planning my upgrades? Okay, so if you look at here, you'll be able to see our latest latest releases, ok? So we have 6.56.46.3, and.16:35And you can see exactly when it will be the end of life announcement date, when it will be the end of software maintenance and the last date of support. This is very crucial, so, so you can plan ahead when do you install.16:54The versions of NSO and when do you upgrade? You, for some, someone who might be new to the versioning of how NSO works, you might, find that it's weird that e.g. the last date of support that NSO six or two.17:13Either is closer than the last date of support of six.one. And this is exactly because of these three letters, right? So these three letters means long term release and short term release, ok? Or long live release or.17:33For short leave release.17:52So when we have a long term release, which is 66.one, it usually supported for like three to four years, and for customers who are not mean to upgrade, to upgrade the refresher tool like every year, we always advise to, to stay and to see.17:54Week with the long term release, ok? So we have six.one that has the last date of support in 2027 and then you have six.four that we'll have in 2028, ok? So right now we are advising always to go to six.four. Very soon we will be start.18:14Advising to stay on six.seven because it will be the next long term release. Short term releases like six.26.three and six.five.18:34They will fall sooner, ok? And they are more for the type of customers that are willing to upgrade their infrastructure like every year and and that that's it.18:45So, going into the, the next part, which is the modernized web UI. So for those who are not new to NSO, I will even log out. You will you will see that the.19:00What I have, in my screen right now is the new login page of NSO, ok? So NSO has changed in this way. So in the past it was some letters in between we had some background image. Now we have a new look that is exactly like this.19:16I'll just do my login, which is not advised. You can even see that the browser is popping me up to to change it. So, so yeah, just local installation in my case, so using admin admin as a.19:36Have the login type. Once you log in, instead of looking at device manager, service manager, et cetera, what you will look now is into this, so you have devices, services, configuration editor, and tools. I told you that we are updating the components of the web UI, which by the way has been widely.19:52Be recognized by the operation teams in our customer sites, you which is now much more user friendly than in the past.20:12And we thank a lot the this compliment and we keep evolving it and by keep evolving it, you will see that, e.g., now we have the device manager that looks like this, but configuration editor is still along with the, with the oldest look, ok? Why? Because.20:21Like I said, we are updating the components one by one in an agile way. So, so yeah, configuration editor, I believe it's coming next. So devices manager, just to show you a little bit how does it change, right? So.20:40Before we had the devices, we had the buttons to do the actions, now where they are. So, if you want to do it for a specific device, you can just come to the device three dots and just do the action that you want, like e.g. connect, ok? And you can see that it results through.20:58Through and I'm now connected to the device.21:17If you want to do a multi device connection or sync from, you just click on select all and then you will have this button called choose action. In the choose action, you can choose the action that you want to do. So e.g., fetch post keys connect or even do the same.21:20From.21:40Okay, so if I execute the sync from, this is what I will get, right? So every device is in sync. So, now what I will do, I will just go into one of my devices and just apply one change, right? So, e.g., if I come here.21:41And I do e.g. NCS netsim, CLIC, and e.g. iOS, XR zero, ok? I do a show run and this is what I have in my device, ok? So.22:00If I go to the configuration mode and I do interface loopback five and I do IPV four address and I do five.five.5.7255255.22:19So I'm just making a quick change in the device like if I was logged in via SSH, ok? In this case I'm just using an so to simulate here the device connection and the device interaction. So I just made the configuration outside of NSO.22:37So when if I now choose the action to do the check sync, I can see that all my devices are in sync, in sync and with the exception of one, which is the iOS XR zero, ok? So I, it it says.22:54I was expecting this and I got that. So if I want to investigate, what should I do? I do on the three dots, compare config, ok? And this is exactly like it was before. So you get a window.23:13In this case saying in red what was the previous configuration and in in the green what is the new configuration of the device? And now we need to make a decision, right? Either we pull the config configuration from the device and save it on NSO CDB.23:31Or we just overtake what what was configured outside of NSO in the device with the configuration that we have on the CDB, so the.sync. So what I will do, I will just do the sync from.23:48And push the configuration, ok? When I click on it, we can see the alarm was cleared and if I go to the iOS XR zero configuration, interface loopback five, IPV four.24:04Address. I can see that I now have the configuration because I've done the the sync from that was present on the device and was done outside of NSO, ok? If I want to make any change using NSO, it's still the same. I click on edit config and I will be able to change my IPs from here.24:20Okay, so.24:40From this perspective, everything is still the same. All right, so what more have changed in what we have called in the past device manager and now it's just the devices, right? So we now have dedicated tab system.24:42For the device groups and authentication groups. So e.g., in what regards to device groups, I have here iOS XR devices. If I want to create a new group, like e.g., iOS devices, I can click create and now we have this new interface, right? So if I click on the devices that I want.25:00Well, to, to, to be part of this group, I just select them, I add them to the group. I will have exactly them in devices in this group. In this way, in this one I will have devices to add to the group.25:21I can even filter them, ok? So e.g., I can say Juniper it enter and it will automatically only show the Juniper devices and I it would happen the same for iOS XR. And now I can just, if I'm happy with this device group creation I can just click on create device group.25:37And I will see.25:57Save save changes successfully. This is another change that happened within NSO six.X web UI. So now with these new elements, we have a lot of changes that are not needed to exactly go through the commit manager to be sent, ok?25:58Whenever you do them from the web UI, they'll be automatically sent and create the, the rollback ID for that transaction, ok?26:18So when I go back, I can now have two groups and within these groups, you know, we can do exactly the same. I can do this check sync, I can, I can apply templates. So e.g., if I click apply templates, I will have here templates to apply.26:27E.g. VTP mode off, I can now do the commit which will commit directly the changes without passing from the, from the commit manager or I can do loading open transaction, which will.26:45Apply the changes, but will be they will be pending in the commit manager which is now accessible by the top icon that is this rocket launcher. Okay, so we we we do our launchpad, so we have these two changes pending and you can see here that even.27:00If I apply this, this template for the device group, I'm only.27:20Affecting one because all the others have already the change configured, ok? I'll revert the changes for now you'll understand later why but this is what it is. In what regard to the devices we have the authentication groups, e.g., in this case we have the default one and we have three users here.27:25Okay, everything managed by the, by the web interface now, it looks like this. So e.g., if you wanna add new users, you can do it from this interface and it will have a form.27:45Like the one you see on the right side where you can manage the remote user and the remote authentication, ok? Just the authentication group and how does it work? Just as a reminder is the mapping between the user that is logging in in NSO and the user that will be used to connect.27:57To the devices, ok? Because.28:17You might be logging in as admin in NSO, but in the devices the username must be totally or should can be totally different. So just to give me a little break from the live demo, I'll go and jump a little bit into the slides.28:20And in what regards to the slides, the 1st topic I have here for today.28:40I mean it's not the 1st topic, I really started with the agenda and the documentation framework etc. But one of the 1st real topics and that have changed the game here for a lot of customers is our, the way we can install NSO, right? So until six dot.28:46Six.one, we could install NSO suddenly on Mark and Linux, ok, with these production images called e.g. or X 86 in what regards to the architectures Since six.one.29:07We can officially because there was a project in GitHub that a lot of customers were using to have NSO in containers and integrated into the pipelines, but it was not official support officially supported. So e.g., if you encounter some issue and face it into.29:25Back, you might get some pushbacks, but for now, if you are using the the new.29:45And officially supported production image of NSO, which should look like this. You will now have a production and a build image, ok? So oops, ok, you.29:50Sorry, cancel just my window ok ok you have a production with a production image and a build image that now can appear here.30:06On NSO.30:25Okay, that you can install on NSO for your pipelines. The differences the production image is what is used for the production environments of of your solution, ok? If you wish to host it using docker containers, the build image, it it's made for development, so it has more.30:27Linux Linux packages that will help you to compile packages et cetera, that's.30:47Something that in the production one it was not built for that. Okay it's built to run the solution at fully not to include development on it, ok? Why we took this move? Because it makes much easier for customers who have their development environments and development validations within.30:52The Pipelines and docker. And now you can have it as well the same issue much not only for development but for production.31:12So moving forward, going to actually the one of the 1st things that we have here in what regards to configurations inside MSO and the which is the the display drive run.31:20Output and prompt before commit, ok? So you know that when you are doing a change inside NSO either to some device or to the CDB, you do the commit and sometimes these comments can go wrong, right? So it's I know it's for that that we have the rollback.31:38But.31:58Sometimes is usually good to have a double check on that. That's why we have the the dry run, right? But with this feature that was implemented, asked for some customers, we now have the commit prompt, which will automatically activate the the.32:00Dry run when you eat the commit, ok? So a lot of times you might be doing changes and then you do commit and you are like oh ****, I should have done the commit dry run just to double check what was changes that I wanted to that were gonna be implemented.32:20So now the situation will not happen anymore in case you activate the feature because you will automatically be prompt with the dry run and if you wanna proceed or not, ok? So by default you you do show CLI and you will see the prompt is in false. There are many ways to activate it.32:37Using the typical way.32:57In NCS.com where you just need to create this piece of configuration enabling commit prompts, ok? Commit prompts is enabled for service actions like redeploy and undeploy of services and for device actions for sync twos, partial sync twos.32:58Migrate and roll back, ok?33:19And now I want to show you some examples. Okay, so in terms of making just simple changes, it is of course enabled as well. So e.g., if I am in NSO and I do commit prompt true.33:24So I activate it without using the NCS.com, so I'm just activating it using the CLI which is possible as well. I didn't go into the configuration and then I do some some simple change like device global settings coming to commit.33:40Check I did the commit, not the commit dry run and automatically got prompt with the driver, ok? And most importantly, in the bottom, you will have something called proceed, ok? So in this proceed, you must say yes or NO.33:58So, and the and if you say NO, it's like you're not, you're not committing anything. If you say yes, you're really pushing the changes that your dry run are advertising. When you do it with an action, so e.g. the redeploy.34:16It works the same way. So e.g., if you try to do the DNS test redeploy, what will happen is that what you see on the screen, so it will show you exactly what will be the diff that will result with this change, ok? And then you will be able to say if you want to proceed or not.34:32No or or not with this change, which is very good because we had customers saying, ok, this redeploy action is so good or undeployees action is so good, but sometimes and use.34:52In in the in the wrong times or by mistake because sometimes it's just a click away in terms of a button, it might cause some arm in our network. So if we get extra protection like this one, it would be good. And now you have it.35:04And this type of configuration can be adjusted in terms of, e.g., seconds. So in terms of if it will pop up to you again. So imagine you are just keep doing changes in your network, in your.35:22In your environment, ok? So if you have the dry run duration set to zero, it means that every time you do a change or even if you don't do a change and you do the commit every time the dry run will be shown automatically, ok? If you increase this from zero to certain.35:39Type of seconds, you will see that.35:58That the NSO will stop showing the dry run and it will only prompt you to proceed if the output is the same, ok? So in this case, we just, we just did the change, ok? So we had the dry run zero, we did the change, the device's global settings, ok? And then.36:01Then we do the commit and after that we say NO, and then we do the commit again and we are seeing exactly the same dry run, ok?36:21What, what happens when I put the dry run duration to another, another value? E.g. 5 s, in this case, e.g., I do the comments, I say NO, I do NO wait time so very quickly I do the comment again. Of course, you try.36:32Ask me that I'm waiting below 5 s. I do the commit again and you can see that now I'm not prompt with the grammar information, ok? I'm just prompted with the yes or NO if I want to proceed.36:51If I say NO and I wait this 5 s, so on the 6th second I do the commit, I will now see again the drive ok information the format can be controlled as well. So in the previous slides you were seeing the format within the CLI format.37:05One default one, but you can use it as well for XML formats, ok?37:25So for those who are more used to the XML format or e.g. you are building a service and you just want to deploy and very quickly see what are the changes and how do they reflect in XML. If you, if you like it this way, you can do it as well. So you can just set up the dry.37:30Format in XML and every time you do the comments it will display the dry run in the XML format. Just like before when you were doing dry run.37:50The dry run out format XML, ok? So all of these types you can choose it, so CLI XML, native or CLIC. So another feature or another change that had happened and you can notice that usually during the demos, I.38:02I satisfy more the web UI people during the slides I will satisfy more the the CLI people, ok? So I usually during the the demos.38:22Do the web UI part and in the slides I do the CLI part because the CLI part is more easier to display in a PPT format, ok? And the part of the demos is more attractive to see, to see and more easy to show the things in the.38:34In the web UI format. So, device selection is something that is new as well and we can do it now in in our actions. So e.g., if you wish to do the connect, you can do it now or.38:51A set of devices using some, some type of selection. So this works for the connect, disconnect, check sync sync from sync to check in models. So in the example on the right side, you'll see exactly what I'm speaking about. So e.g., you do devices connect device select starts with.39:10Name and e.g. iOS xr. So any any device that starts with this naming or like like like the name says, it will be selected for executing this action, ok? So in this case we have four devices, iOS XR zero to three and became.39:31That they all share the same.39:51Prefix or the same, the same, the same part of the name in the beginning they will all be executed with this connect. We can, we could have done the sync from like that sync to et cetera. This is just a way to facilitate the the device selection when a.39:53Applying actions using the CLI, ok? Of course in the web UI, you don't really need this because it's very simple and easier to select devices to make actions in the web UI, ok? There are always advantages.40:13In in one in in one of of northbound interface for one, for one type of of the action and for other northbound interface for other type of actions. So this doesn't stop with just one.40:27Device naming, so it can be, e.g., a selection like this. So e.g., if you want to do a selection between C and P, you or P, you can do it as well and this will connect all the devices that have these two names as a start.40:43The same for, e.g., if you wanna connect to all the devices that you don't heard from them since since January, you can do it as well or for all the devices that share some specific net ID, ok? So e.g., for all the devices.41:00That shared the iOS XR and ID net ID seven.sixty nine they will they will do the connect or they will be affected by the connect regarding what are their their name or prefix.41:20We now have a unified label for commits, ok? So if you have been using things like commit queue, et cetera, so we have the tag.41:38Now label will replace everything, ok? So labels and comments are now available for all northbound interfaces. E.g., in the past, you could have do your comments with with the comments and labels using the CLI, but when you were e.g. in the web GUI, you were not able.41:50To to to send as well labels and comments and for customers this was like a drawback and and yeah, now it's available for all the northbound interfaces and the actual label is replacing things like a tag because.42:09It's very similar in terms of naming, so it's just a unification like deciding which one should stay and applying to all the features that that we have inside the solution. In this case we picked up the label parts and this is how it can be done. So you have an example here now on the most used.42:26Background interfaces or web UI and CLI, so on the web UI, when you do the commit.42:46You will see exactly like these label and comment parts that you can use for a lot of things like putting, putting the, the ticket number that you are affecting that you are making the change that are justifying the change that you are making on NSO, et cetera et cetera, right? So.42:51To to to easily identify the change that you are doing, you can use these comments and labels. And you have here as well an example on how to execute it using the CLI, you do, e.g., the VTP load transparent and then you can do your labels and comments like that.43:11Oh, modernized web UI, so let's go again for the for the demo parts. In the demo parts I told you we have like like some change elements, right? So we already seen have seen the device manager. We can now go to the service manager. So in what.43:31In Regards to the service manager, we now have, e.g., this way of selecting it. So with all our services will be displayed here. So e.g., we have the MPP, ok? And we have here already on service instance called test, ok?43:51But when you open it, you will see that you have here how many devices that, that you are affecting with this change, ok? But if you want to deploy changes in the service, you, you still need to do them in the configuration editor, ok? Because.44:09If you have seen the previous architecture on how web UI was designed, services were modified or everything is modified through configuration editor, but so part of the service is already revamped. The next part is coming.44:28Within the next releases. So all the actions that you typically do for services can be done from here, like check sync, the, the redeploy and deploy et cetera deep check sync, but if you want to make changes, you need to click.44:45Modifying configuration editor and you will be redirected to where these changes are done, which is in the configuration editor format, right? The old one. So you can click on it and e.g., if I add the device like iOS XR two, I'll be able to see here.45:02In my lunchpad that I have two changes pending and you will see what are the changes with the service. So, so before I only had iOS XR pre configured, now I'll have iOS 6R3 and two configured.45:21And these are the changes that I'm pulling to the iOS XR two device. So I'm pulling the max associations configurations beer and some server list with mean pool and max pool configurations, right? So to do the comment.45:39Then make changes, I just click commit. If I click on this pan I'll be able to see the label and comment that we just spoke about, but I don't want to to to set anything for now. I will just need to comment and I will see that my comment was finished and the rollback ID was.45:56This one, ok? In what regards to other tools and other features that were launched within NSO web UI that were revamped, we have the insights, so insights is not new to NSO six, it already came if I'm not wrong in five.seven or five.eight.46:16And it already came with the idea of this new and the revamped new look of the, of NSO, right? So you already have this design where you can see the latest insights or monitoring capabilities that the solution have.46:35So e.g., you can see how much time your transactions are taking. You can see how many northbound sessions you have in NSO, either from Json RPC part or web UI or, other parts like CLI, netconf, Restau.46:54You can overwatch everything from here. You can see how many devices you have. So in this case twelve, and how many sync from you have done? How many have failed, how many have were successful, ok? And as well how many out of syncs were detected. So in this case you remember that we just did one.47:09Out of sync in the start of the session where we did a change in the loopback five of iOS XR zero and you can see that this statistic is is placed here.47:29Okay, as well how many comments we have done and how much size our CDB is is occupying in the disk and memory, ok? So, so yeah, you will always see or most of the times see that the memory uses.47:42Much more space than the disk, and this is what makes NSO runs as well very fast, which is a lot of times.48:02The informations are stored in memory and only the ones that are needed for NSO to establish the state that it was before if it crashes or if you reboot the window, the the host it saved on the disk, ok? Everything else which will run on memory which make it make makes it to run much faster.48:10Besides from that, we have as well the packages. So you remember that in previously in NSO, the reload packages was everything from the configuration editor. You could see them, it was not very intuitive, but but the.48:33And and you couldn't see much from there. Now you have a dedicated page just for that, so you can see that we have three neds. So network element drivers for Juniper devices, iOS XR and iOS devices, which includes iOS XE.48:50And you have, e.g., your services, which in this case is NTP. If you click on it, you'll be able to see some information based on that. Like e.g., the minimum version that needs to have in order to support this package and the same for the neds. So if you click on it, you'll be.49:05Able to see the minimum versions needed to, to run this package like four.four.49:25And you will see the package version, description, and everything else that belongs to the build XML data file that that belongs to the package, ok? So yeah, besides that, we have the alarms, ok? And in the alarms you the.49:31This was revamped as well and you are now able to see more beautiful way.49:51How the alarms, what are the alarms you have and how they are handled. So in this case, e.g., you can even, you even have a link for the alarm types here and it will open our documentation with all the alarms that we have on NSO, what do they mean, what are the severity?49:57Description recommended action and.50:17How do they clear, ok? Oops. As well when you enter in the alarm, you can see this one the device is out of sync for 26 min ago. We click on it and we can see the type, the information about the alarm, right? You remember.50:19We got this message, we it was for this device I was 6R0.50:39We had the major severity, it was now cleared, ok? But NSO has detected, like you already know, NSO does this correlation and when does this type of alarm happens for the devices and it detected that eleven of February was the 1st time it detected this device was out of.50:44And now.51:04We it it was as well out of sync in 18th of March, ok? And we can see here the all the times that this device was out of sync, so device was out of sync in 11th of february, twelve of February and then 18 of March. For the cases of course this is always very useful for the cases where.51:06You your devices are constantly out of sync or e.g. every Monday your devices are out of sync, you can easily detect with this type of analysis.51:26That something is wrong and you can start some investigation, right? So, so yeah Apart from that, we have more things like now you can execute configuration changes in a, in a subset of devices.51:39Okay.51:59This is of course done for, for CLI at the moment. This was possible as well in the past but using different types of manipulation like using device templates, right? In this case it's just it's not for that type of that extensive type of.52:00Of manipulation, right? In this case, it's just like a simple configuration, you want to spread across many devices. You don't want or you don't need to create a big or or a template for that.52:20So you just want to do like a simple change and apply to the devices in this case is e.g. the host name, we are changing it from the netsim zero to three and and yeah when you do the show configure, you will see that all the devices have been affected with this change.52:32It doesn't work only for devices with the same prefix, so in this case, e.g., like that zero two entry, so the two entry will automatically guess that the rest of the.52:52Of the, of, of the naming is what's not the number and it will pick up the net sim part for the devices that have different names like netsym zero for one by two, you can apply these type of changes as well. So it doesn't need to be just for the same device types.53:07Yeah, some things that sometimes customers are surprised to is that we can transfer files between NSO and the devices and vice versa, and now the the what is new is that you can use it.53:27Doing SFTP, ok? So how do you do it? So when you when you go into the devices device I was XR zero, you do SCP and you have from and two, just like the sync two and sync from is from.53:47From the device to, to the device from NSO to the device. The logic is the same. So e.g., in this case we do device to device EX zero SCP from the local file.54:05Test, ok? So we are we are copying a file from the device to NSO remote file, test protocol SFTP, ok? And then we will pick the, the, the, the remote file or the local file in the device and send it.54:20To to NSO and give it the name and because we are not providing any path, it will just stay in the route.54:40To provide the path you just need to put it before the file name. Okay, just like plain Linux operations, redcoff. Okay, so there are news in as well. So we now have e.g. an exclude query parameter.54:48Okay, so e.g., there might be situations where you are doing some type of get query to the to the NSO either for a service or just for some configuration and.55:08And you notice that a lot of configurations are returned, right? A lot that some that you don't care and you want to ease this type of return and now you can do that using the excludes. So e.g., in this case, if you do the get.55:25With the DHCP server service that, that you have, subnet parts, you will get the the all of these as a return, but in orange and you get the range more specifically.55:43You have more, more things but you have the range, the which have inside dynamic would be low and high elements, ok? And imagine from the range I want to exclude the low and the high. So what do I do?56:00Oh, sorry. So I just do in the in the payload or in the in the link, I will say subnet question mark exclude range low high and then I will only get the return off range dynamic boot B.56:17Okay, so this is too lower in terms of what is the response I'm getting. In terms of rollbacks, ok, so in the selective rollback, rollbacks have been something that has changed as well.56:36Within the evolution of NSO, ok? So in the past it was done through some ways. Now, do we have this new way of doing the rollbacks using the rollback files, and this is how you can do the exclude within the rollback parts, ok?56:53So e.g., if you make this configuration, so you are just configuring the domain name and the IPV four into, into the into the device and you are configuring as well the VTP mode. You do the commit and now you want to roll back, ok?57:12So you do rollback files, applying rollback file, you get the commit ID and you just say fixed number and you put new number. If you do the dry run or if you have the commit prompt enabled that we saw in the 1st features of today, you'll be able to.57:27To automatically get the prompt, right? The drive and prompt. But imagine you want to exclude some parts. So from these rollback 708I don't want to roll back the VTP configuration that I've done. So how can.57:46How can this be excluded, right? So when I do, the the done using x part, ok? And how can you display x part? So in the web UI, you have the way to display the expert in the CLI, you need to do, e.g., show running coffee.58:05Devices device include VTP and then pipe display x part and you get the X part for this configuration, ok? And when you are doing the rollback files.58:25You do apply rollback file fixed number, exclude and you paste the the X part that you are that you are specifying, right? So in this case, the path that I want to exclude when I do this rollback is the VTP mode, ok? So which is the only thing I've configured in terms of.58:37VTP.58:57And I can see that now when I do my dry run, of course this is not the real device, but you will trust me it's like that. You will only see the domain piece that that will be rolled back. Okay, so the VTP was completely excluded from the rollback.58:58Take action. In terms of package reloads, we had a lot of customers and this is something that is not new, customers ask for it, like how can we ease the package reload, so e.g. if I want to add a new NED, I need to do a package reload, and these might be.59:18Crucial and big for my infrastructure, right? Because when you do the package reload it will stop the transactions, et cetera. It will make the the solution available for new transactions, so how can we use this if you want to just add a new NED without many complications?59:37So now it's we added a new way, so you just copy the new NED package to the load pad, ok, so the packages folder, e.g., and you invoke the action. So you do e.g. request packages add and you can do the pipe details.59:55If you want to see what NSO is doing in the background, ok? And in the end hopefully you will see the results true. Most of the times if you don't see the result true, it's because you are trying to add or you have things to add there in the packages that are not needs.01:00:12Like e.g., in the right side you are seeing that someone is trying to add, e.g., a service and the the the commands and NSO detected that you were are trying to add something that is not an EDD and so it will not allow to add.01:00:29The the service without doing the packages reload. For now services are still required to be loaded using the package reload command just the neds escaped from that.01:00:49If you have an HA, how can you do it same way, so you copy the NED to the load part of the of the 1st one and or of the primary, you execute the comment there and then if you do the pipe details, you will even even see that it transfer.01:01:06Turning the files between, between one to another and then and then doing the.01:01:26Returning the results true, meaning that the package is already there. Compliance templates, one of the newest features that came within NSO. And you can tell me now, ok, but compliance reports were already possible.01:01:32Using device templates. What does it change? So now we have compliance templates that were introduced in NSO six.one, ok? And what changes that when you have device templates, which they are very good for the work what they are supposed to do, which is applying.01:01:52Configurations to the devices even.01:02:12Just a single time action remediation action or day zero configuration as to the devices. They're very good for that. But they were lacking in in in features that would allow really to do compliance. Like e.g., imagine when you.01:02:15You're doing or running your compliance reports with your.01:02:35Device templates. How can you assure that some configuration, like e.g. in the line vty? Or for the radios or LDAP is only not only that has the configurations that you are looking for, but only that configurations. So you want to be sure.01:02:39Added, e.g., an interface?01:02:59Only have the IP address configured under each and the description. Nothing else. How do you do assure that when you are doing just using device templates? It was not possible. So now with compliance templates, we, it's basically device templates but with new capabilities like.01:03:01Tags. So we with now these tags, we added a lot of features like street, allow empty, absent that empowers it to to work much better in what regards and already in production in a lot of customers, in what regards to, to do compliance.01:03:21Real compliance on NSO. If you want to know more about it, I I've presented in Cisco Live Amsterdam like like a month, a month ago, a session just on compliance reporting, you can see it from the from the on demand library.01:03:40And the yeah how how does it work, right? So to create your compliance template, you just need to go to the configuration, do compliance templates, and e.g., you say interface up, you choose the net ID.01:03:59You put your configurations and and you can do it. And the biggest new is that now, not only you are asserting things that are related to configurations on the devices, but you can do it as well for operational data. So e.g., you want to assert that some interfaces are in up.01:04:15In terms of status link, you can do it as well, ok?01:04:35And e.g. in this case you are seeing what we call operational compliance, and when you do check device, you'll be able to see if the link is up or down. In what regards to compliance templates, they allow empty, what does it do?01:04:39So we had this problem in the past so especially when using device templates. So e.g., you want to be sure, ok, this device have this configure this group of devices have this configuration under.01:04:5910 gb internet or gigabit ethernet, ok? And some devices had one type of interface, others don't. So e.g., in some devices you were lacking on you're having 10 gb internets and because of that, the compliance report was failing because we were, we are only speaking about automation.01:05:16So target targeting a big number, a big set of devices and we cannot make a rule for all.01:05:36So in this case, the rule is to add a tag called allow empty, and this tag will say that, e.g., for this template, we are, we, what we want to check if all the devices that we are targeting have gigabit internet.01:05:43And hundred gigabit internet with the same. So with the allow empty in each of these interfaces, what will allow is that.01:06:09The, the compliance report will not fail if a device is lacking on having one interface type, ok? So e.g., I'm testing in all the devices for these three types of interfaces and these specifically configurations under them. But if a device doesn't have a gigabit internet.01:06:20It will not the it will allow the compliance report to pass. In what regards to the strict mode, it's just what I explained before. So e.g., you have your compliance template, line strict line console strict, and you want to be sure the only thing.01:06:39You you have configured in the devices is exact timeout five zero login authentication and logging synchronous. You want to be sure that not only these configurations are in the devices, but you want to be sure that nothing else.01:06:57That are allowed to be configured under line console zero is configured as well. So I don't want any exact auto select accounting, access class, anything. So the compliance report will fail if it finds, even if it finds the configuration is good, but if it's anything else there.01:07:14Configured. This is the with the strict mode tag. You can now, and this is something new as well, you can now do the this deep check sync inside the compliance reporting as well with the deep check sync, so in the past if you were doing.01:07:34Compliance reports instead of using device templates you were using services, you could only do like a check sync of the service, which is checking the configuration between the device and the CDB. Now with the deep check sync, you know that instead of just checking the service configuration in the CDB it will actually check.01:07:52In the device and make the match between both to be sure.01:08:11You're, you're running a compliance report that is actually within what is configured on the device, ok? So to configuring it under the configurations of the service check, you just select the checks in as true and it will be the action selected by default. You can see here a difference, so in this case, the check.01:08:16Sync was disabled so it resulted NO violation. But when we enabled deep check sync, we discovered that we had changes done in the devices that we were that NSOCDB was not aware so the devices were out of sync and that resulted in some violations in what regards to the, to the re.01:08:36And we can see on the right side what is the diff for these changes? And yeah, demo time one of the last ones. So, so yeah I'll be very quick here. We are almost on the top of the hour. So if I.01:08:57Click on compliance reports and you will find here that I have some compliance reports already created, compliance results and compliance templates, ok? So what I will do is I will just run this report VTP check.01:09:15I'll call it run VTP one. I will click run. So you'll be able to see others compliance works in the new UI of NSO and after I click run, it will.01:09:32Just run over it. It should be pretty fast, and now we have got the results and when we click on it, we can see we tested four devices, zero services because we are using compliance templates.01:09:48And we run today and we got some violations. When we go in, we can see that we got one device, it's not compliant, three devices are compliant. We can export this information to a PDF.01:10:04Okay, so we can click on it and you can attach this to your tool, to your management tools to you can send by email saying that you are looking into the compliance because imagine you are responding to a P cert and you want to patch all your devices through some CVE that's happening, that is happening.01:10:19You want to be sure that all the devices are compliant and you quickly isolate or fix the devices that are not compliant with that. So, you can just come here, you can see the historic changes. So in this case we are 75 % compliant. It was not the 1st time we run. The 1st time we were 100 %.01:10:39We are 75 %. If we scroll down, we can see all the devices we have.01:10:59For this report and we can see that three are compliant, one is not compliant. When I click on view details, I can exactly see the difference, the diff that is making this device not being compliant with, with this, this.01:11:04This reporting, right? To fix it, now you have two ways. Either you go to the device itself and fix what is missing for the device to be compliant or you can create a device template which already pre created. So if I go to iOS.01:11:20XR zero, I'll say apply templates. I will apply the VTP mode off that you remember I applied before, but I didn't want to push just to be sure I I was not compliant now and now I will push the configuration to the iOS XR zero, which will make me.01:11:38Compliance. Okay, so I push the configuration change. I go compliance reports, I run the report again. So run VTP two, I will say run, Wait a little moment.01:11:58And after some seconds, this report should should should return. And if we click on the results, we can now see that for the four number of devices that we tested, we are not don't have.01:12:16Have any violations, so we are fully compliant. We, when we look at here, we see that we have zero devices, non compliant, full compliant. We can see this beautiful graphic that shows how have we historically evolved in terms of compliance?01:12:36With these reports, ok? Not only if we are already 100 % compliant, but when we we went from 100 % to 75 like this case, ok? These compliance reports just as an overview, if you want like a full glance of it, just let us know.01:12:54Or you can review my Cisco presentation that I've done in Amsterdam just a month ago.01:13:13Okay, in what regards to the presentation why this doesn't go away? I have it here. Okay, so, so yeah.01:13:18This list of things that are new, I mean, they keep go on and on and you, you saw that I've been speaking like almost without stopping for 1 h and 15 min and I haven't even covered 10 % of what has changed.01:13:35I selected some that I felt it was more important that's useful, could be useful to show here but there is much more. Like we now have Python virtual environments that that is supported for the packages, ok? In the past it was not. We have partial reconcile.01:13:51AJ raft, so high availability raft, a new method of doing high availability. You can manage high availability in the web UI as well. You can do.01:14:11Partial reconcile and ACM, so device group authorization that in the past was not possible. Restaurant push et cetera et cetera. So the list is big and the key takeaway that I want you to have is that is your feedback.01:14:21It shapes the future of the product, right? So in the previous slide, you saw that when I told you that the list goes on and on, we had some of the changes that were proposed by customers because in the end we do this for you, ok? So if you have.01:14:40Anything to propose, anything to say like this button shouldn't be on the left side, should be on the right side. As simple as this. Of course I'm over exaggerating, but if you have something that can make the product more mean meaningful to you, if you see that is something that should change.01:15:00The product, you're always welcome to propose it and I'm opening this for now. So you have these QR codes.01:15:20With this passcode we can send it after. I'll be I'm willing to accept any answer from your side anything that you would like to have changed for for the product, any proposal I'll just grab everything and bring it, bring it to the to the business unit.01:15:28Right or in the case something needs some development for.01:15:48For it to be developed, right? So I'll keep this this pool running for like a week so you have time to think you can you can propose it after. And and yeah, I mean that concludes my main goal here in what regards to, to, to.01:15:52The NSO and the new features that just came, ok? Of course like I said, there is much more.01:16:12And if you wish to know more we will I will drop my email on the on the chat and you can always reach out either with suggestions or if you, if you have anything else that you that you would like to have clarified regarding your infrastructure.01:16:20So, I mean from my side it's everything. I don't know David, if there was any question in the chats that left and answered we had the Q and AI see two hands raised.01:16:43If you have any questions yeah. I see there the chat is empty and we see one hand raised, either he can put the question in the chat let me see.01:17:01If there's something there, I don't know if you just did it by mistake or want to ask any question. Let's give a couple of minutes. Sure.01:17:16Yeah, but for now we don't have any other question. Let's wait. Okay. But ok. But in case in case some some question comes up in the future, you can just you can you can just ping me ping us directly in the email. I just a question.01:17:33Yeah, I just wanted to know what is the status of an ECM authorization for the device groups. Okay, so that's, this is actually good because for this for ok for Nicos I mean this is actually good because we are actually planning.01:17:53Another session just on role based access control that is that is coming for the next quarter and we'll be sure we will we will include this this NECM authorization for device groups examples. For now I can.01:18:13After this, if you send me an email, I can prompt you to some, to some examples and how does it work and how it was designed to and and yeah that is usually is to facilitate the these rules, right? So within CM, you can do some restriction on what types of commands.01:18:31Will be working? Is it working with the regex? What do you mean for the.01:18:51For the device names for the if you want just drop us in an email and we'll discuss it in a one on one, ok? Say yes the device group name yes yeah drop drop me drop us an email and we will discuss it one on.01:18:57One I can show, you can show you the feature if you need it very usually. Otherwise we will show you, we will show as well for for the wider audience in the, in the upcoming months.01:19:17Yeah, that's that's a topic that we have planned for next quarter and we will cover it like more in deep as well. Thank you very much George. Let's see if there is NO more more questions on the chat. Okay, I don't know if you want to add anything else George?01:19:28I mean I'm good. Just thank you everyone for coming and and I hope to see you all on the next ones and give us the feedback. We need to ship the product and of course you have my email, reach out in case of any questions and follow UPS needed, be more than happy to help to assist you.01:19:48Thank you George. So for today's everything we wait for you next week. We have Robert is going to guide us through kickers and subscribers, so that's a very interesting topic. We hope to see you there. Please share the registration links within your team, within your organization.01:20:08And we will be very happy to have you in our next sessions. Thank you very much. See you next time.01:20:27