Wireless Network Automation with Catalyst Center

Oh, Alright. Well, Hello, good afternoon. Welcome everyone to today's expert insights series session.00:00Question on wireless network automation with Catalyst Center. My name is Mayla Sard.00:20I am your host today and I'm joined by Tyler Kiddle. Both Tyler and I are part of customer experience in the enterprise network space with a focus on Catalyst Center, and it's not a secret that we both have a thing for wireless.00:26In the industry from engineering to architecture and everything in between?00:46In other words, I've been in the game long enough to know that it's always the Wi Fi even when it's not. Today I have the pleasure of sharing this session with a wonderful co host, Tyler Kiddle. Tyler is a veteran CSS who knows Catalyst Center like the back of his hand.00:51The goal of our expert insights series is to share knowledge in a format that where the information we will provide builds on the previous sessions information. We offer those sessions to help you on your catalyst center journey. And the last year we've hosted a number of those expert insights series, which were.01:11Targeting the foundation cases of Catalyst Center, in other words, the basics. If you would like to view the session again or any of the future session, you can go to the URL that we'll share later on in the presentation and I, and you will be able to view as.01:31To Register for sessions.01:51So today we're hosting 2nd of these EIS series, which aim at helping you elevate your practice. The series will offer a number of sessions. Last week our peers hosted a great session on network compliance, and next week the focus will be on troubleshooting with callist center. Don't miss it, there's definitely.01:52Would be interesting.02:12So as we get started with our main program of the day, I'd like to point to you that you can ask us questions via the Q and A panel. To get there, click on the three dots menu at the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Tyler and I along with our gracious panelists, Anthony and.02:14And Irving will answer them as we go.02:34In the event that your questions, it's not that your question is not answered, your information maybe recorded so that we can provide you with the adequate answer at a later time. Alright, so without further ado, our main program on this fine day network intent for wireless.02:37So when Catalyst Center was designed, Cisco's goal was to focus on what we as engineers want to achieve with the tool that was being built and not the multitude of commands required to achieve it. This is what we mean when by intent. Through Catalyst Center, we want to assist you.02:57Between automating your tasks by using workflows in the GUI.03:18These works re these workflows will in their turn be translated by Catalyst Center as commands which will be applied to your devices via automation. Alright, so before we delve into Catalyst Center, let me give you a bit of a roadmap of.03:22What intent and the broader picture looks like for wireless. So the common methodology of a wireless deployment calls for what we sometimes call the four Ds or four Ds and a V depending on the version. So in most wireless projects were called to define.03:41Which in Calas Center would be building your site hierarchy defining where your ATs will be positioned.04:02So a predictive site survey, e.g., and then design, which will call us to define the network settings, the network profile, the golden image that we want to run on our deployment, then deploy where we're going to really get our hands dirty and.04:09Configure our 98 hundreds and our access points.04:29And then eventually all that good stuff being rolled out into production, we might run into a few, a few hiccups or client issues, and that's where our catalyst center assurance use case shines with network health, client issues, and all our nice three 60 dashboards.04:33So let's get back to our plan stage. To get started, to use our caller center, you 1st have to define this hierarchy. And so you're going to go to design network hierarchy, and this hierarchy is, is.04:53A tree that's of areas, buildings and the floors that are all grouped under a global route.05:13And there are several ways you can create this hierarchy. You may use an export from prime, e.g., in apic EM format, create a hierarchy framework into which you will import your Echohau projects in ESX or maybe you want to create it from scratch using your own set of logical areas and.05:21Called buildings as you please.05:42If you choose to go this route, you should know that there are three constructs which you can use. So the logical group called areas that are not tied to coordinates. So here for me an example could be Canada and in Canada we have provinces. So.05:44The area Canada could contain another area Quebec, and then somewhere between two snowbanks I could have a building called May's house, which would, which would have a street address or GPS coordinate if snow really gets above the roof, right? And so.06:04So you could see the location and map appear for maze.06:24Mace house on on the maps that are coming from our integration with mapbox. And then in my house, if I'm so lucky to have AutoCAD four maps, I could integrate a DXF or DWG file for the.06:28Main floor and the basement, and that would be super practical because I'd get the scale and all of that. But I could also rely on a GPEG or PNG or maybe even a PDF.06:48Alright, so let's take a look at access point planning. Catalos Center is a great tool to visualize the coverage of APs both in two and three Ds. The tool is not necessarily intended to be a replacement for some of our partners great products to do an entire building's worth of predictive site survey.07:07Thing, but it can be very useful and can have some attenuation areas drawn in and we can also import from site surveys or AI Pro.07:27So that you can have your planned access points, which we will see here outlined. I'll get my laser pointer with that little p.that you see up here. So placing APs on a Mac can be done post discovery at any.07:40Point in time, but there's good value in importing and importing the whole predictive site survey project into Calis Center with devices and all of the, and, and that's very handy when time comes for PNP because if an AP is not in Calas Center device inventory.08:00Generally you'll see it appear with that little P.08:21And, through naming convention and the claiming process, you'll be able to translate those APs that are discovered in PNP to the imported planned APs that you have on your map.08:23That way you don't have to click a million times and add a million APs and they will be placed almost automatically into your floor maps and you won't have 02:00 to spend clicking on your maps, so this is.08:42Really efficient.09:01All right, we've got our maps and our hierarchy sorted. So, let's take a look at the deployment workflow. So, all these constructs, the network services that are assigned to the site, the profiles that are.09:03Are assigned to a site. The WLC that's assigned to a site, everything comes back to the site that will constitute your configuration that you have for for the the wireless infrastructure.09:23So, let me remind you really quickly what we have for the configuration of a 9800. So in the config, the 9800 config model, we have the RF tag which constitutes the glue around.09:40On all the ARRF profiles for the various bands, so you have 2.4, you have five, you have six. So the RF tag is going to be the group that is assigned to your access point.10:00And then you're going to have the site tag that will define the properties of, of the central APs and the remote APs more of a, AP profile flavor, and then the broadcast domain and the policies and the properties of the respective ssids are going to be.10:13Good together from the WLAN profile and policy profile into the site tag.10:34So to be precise, the policy tag contains all the stuff from the WLAN profile, so your WLAN ID, your SSID, all the definition of this SSID and things like load balance, then select.10:40And then Aeronet IE and all that good stuff. The components of policy profiles would be your ACLs, your QoS, your ABC, the session timeout, the little timeout, the policy map should you have one?10:59And all the central services. In the site tag, you're going to have your joint profile, which is really all about the AP itself. So if you want to turn on or off the the leds.11:17If you want to define how it's discovering its controller, if you want to define the username and password, should you have.1X the credentials that will be required for that? And then all these, these management aspects and, and typical aspects of.11:32Of the AP itself. Then you're going to have also the flex connect profile if you have branch offices, so whether the traffic is locally switched or centrally switched policy ACLs and that all that good stuff. So everything that's in there is going to get brought together in the site tag.11:52The RF tag is going to be your data rates, all your RM settings, RXSOP, how you're handled handling multicast data rates, the number maximum number of clients that you have load balancing band select.12:14And all that good stuff and bringing all that together is what makes the classic 9800 config. However, channelist center further simplifies it by creating what we call a basic RF profile.12:32File or AIRF profile.12:52And the network profile. The network profile will take the WLAN profile and policy, the AP joint profile and flex profile. It'll it everything is going to be in that, that construct, and then the RF is going to be in the RF profile.12:55So let's dive into SSID creation. We can get into that by going to design network settings and wireless. And by the way, just FYI throughout our presentation, we have this little menu that guides you through where we are. So as you can see, we're here in.13:14And, oh, yeah, sorry there was a little bit of a shade here. So we have a, a little squarery that guides us to where we are.13:34So 1st by creating to create my SSID, I'm going to select whether it's enterprise or guest WLAN, and please note that throughout this creation, I have a couple of advanced settings that I need to take care of.13:52Alright, so basic settings, what do I have? I have my SSID name, the bands that I'm going to support, kind of QoS I'm going to do, radio radio policies, and that's where we'll.14:13Enable whether or not we want to broadcast and enable this SSID.14:33Then we'll delve into the security with the AAA server definition and conclude that by completing the advanced settings such as KVR, W, management frame protection, our encryption and.14:38Keys in our session timeout.14:58Which remember was a whole day. Okay, now that it's done, we can associate the model config to the SSID and associate that with a wireless network profile. So we're going to create our we're going to link our created ssid.15:00ID to a WLAN, network profile.15:20Tying everything into our network profile, so we have the SSID, all the details, the interface name, we also attached specific configuration.15:26To the network profile. Here we have two active configurations so advanced so yeah that's also here that you'd specify the cleaner configuration. So we have the advanced SID, SI.15:44The Cisco ENT and then your clean air.16:04All right, so tying everything together in the advanced settings with my custom site tag and my custom AP profile. So I already have created my, my SSID. Now I'm going to tie everything into.16:12Onboarding the controller. Now I have discovered those controllers through PNP, which you can do either using option 43 or DNS. Since we already have the configuration for our wireless network now, we can go ahead and start the.16:32Claiming process.16:51So let's go ahead. We're going to go into the menu action and then claim. We're going to name it and assign a site to it.16:57And then, I also have to find the image that I'm going to run defining the credentials, so the WMI, subnet mask gateway, the interface that I will need.17:14All my good crads.17:35Alright, now let's assign a little bit of configuration that I need. If I had CLI templates, that's where I would list them for multicast, e.g., and tying everything together so we can start the claim.17:40So once I've click the next button and start has started the claim process, you can see that I can view the history of all and the details of the claiming process and if there's an issue or specific information that I could that I would like to look in.18:01What's available is, illustrated here on the right hand side.18:21Alright, so slowly but surely updating the code. Here we go. We're provisioned and all good.18:29Alright, so here's a wrap up of what we did. So we went to our hierarchy which we created.18:45And then we had a oopsy, sorry about that. It's a little sensitive this one. All right, so tying everything together, going into the hierarchy, we can view our building.18:59And then viewing this building, we can add a bunch of APs. All right. And you can see that these are planned APs because they have the black.with the P on them, and then I can actually.19:17Edit those planned APs if I had more details on them.19:37Then going into the hierarchy, yeah. I apologize for this. All right.19:44We have our APs. Sorry, that's where I messed up. Okay, so we have our APs, that's fun. We have, we are making sure that all the the details are being provisioned correctly.20:02We have the triple A server, we have the DHCP server, the settings are ok. Alright, going into the wireless, where, where we define Sorry, I'm really struggling today.20:20Let's get back. Alright defining the basic SSID settings, so as you can see, defining the SSID 2.456 and then the admin status and whether or not I want to broadcast my SSID.20:43All right, skip the 2.4, always a good idea. Alright, so that was a little fast, but I inserted all the information for my.21:01Session timeout and all of that. I'm associating the model config to the SSID. All right, enterprise. Here we go. I'm adding my interface.21:17All right, so my wireless settings are, are all set and still struggling with this recording. I apologize. These things are hard to display in real time, so that's why we have to resort to recording and sometimes the manipulation of it all is a little.21:35Tricky. Alright, I promise I won't interrupt this time, so we have our wireless settings. We assign the network profile to the site, make sure we have our site tag.21:55Our advanced settings. All right. Let's do a plug and play, check if we have our controller. It should show up in a, in a few minutes.22:12All right, we have the controller. Let's start the claiming process, assign a name to that controller, assign a site to it. Alright, make sure we give it the right credentials.22:31Provisioned the templates, we didn't have templates just like in my example alright.22:54So the device has been claimed, as you can see, we have all the info that we needed.23:15It's provisioning, right now and here we go.23:23Finally, we have it. Our controller has been provisioned and well that, so bear in mind when you prepare this this this discovery if.23:39You're, if you decide not to use PNP, if you run the day zero flow on the 9800, it will create an SSID and AAA config, so before you do a discovery, you have to remove those because they tend to to cause a few hiccups.23:58Right from that, you will still need the basic config, so host name, admin, the interface config, the WMI country code, and then.24:18Yeah, so with that being said, I will pass it back to Tyler who present on 9800 high availability. Okay, thanks. So I've seen a couple of questions in the chat.24:28Regarding if we're gonna discuss the brownfield scenario, so we are going to do that in a little bit here. What we're talking about so far is going to be Greenfield and we will get to the brownfield scenario in in just a couple of minutes. So.24:47Moving forward, we're gonna go ahead and talk about how we can configure the 9800 controller in catalyst center and configure high availability. Let me get my labor pointer here and get started.25:05Hello, a couple of prerequisites that we have to make sure before we go ahead and start configuring HA in cattle center. We have to make sure that the active and the standby controllers are both added to the inventory in Cattle Center.25:21We have to make sure that the both of the controller are the same type, right? So we can't have a 9098 hundred-eighty and a 98 hundred-forty. We have to make sure that they're both 9880 and they have to be on the same software version of code.25:39We have to make sure that the wireless management interface is configured on the standby and the best way to go about onboarding the standby into catalyst center is through the plug and play. So, just a quick note too, there's gonna be a little bit, there's gonna be a little legend here.25:56At the top right of the screen. This is gonna be your guide as to where we are in catalyst center. So we're gonna bounce around between a couple of sections.26:15In catalyst center. So if you ever get lost, just look in the top right screen and that's where we'll be. So moving forward here, in order to configure HA on the 9800 and catalyst center, what we're gonna go ahead and do is we're gonna check the box for the primary controller that we wanna configure.26:25And then hover over actions, go to provision and then configure WLCHA. Now, we're configuring here is, two 9800 cloud controllers.26:45So in this scenario, we have to make sure that we select the right interface for HA to be configured on the cloud controllers. So we're gonna choose the primary and the secondary interface to be gig three. Gig two is gonna be used for the wireless management, so we we we don't want to go ahead and use that. We want to make sure that we.27:00Use eight three.27:20And then we have to make sure that we have the redundancy and the peer redundancy management IPs configured along with the net mask as well. And the net mask is pretty much always gonna be a/twenty four for HA. And then once we're ready to go, we'll go ahead and click on configure a.27:21Sure.27:41Many many will be brought this warning here, so when we do configure HA, just like traditionally, the controllers are gonna go ahead and reboot and when the controllers reboot, we're gonna lose manageability and reachability between the two controllers momentarily while they.27:43Reboot and come back up. So.28:02As you can see here, the two controllers that we've rebooted are currently unreachable and unmanageable, so we'll let them go through the process and then once the controllers come back up and they're online, if we configure HA successfully through cattle center, you should see a blue chain here.28:05They're next to the primary controller controller, right? And notice how the secondary controller is NO longer in the inventory.28:25So when we get this chain here, we can go ahead and click on it. And when we configure this HA and everything is good, the sync status will change to duplex. So when you say that the sync status is duplex and redundancy.28:32Update of SSO that means we are good to go and that there's NO errors or warnings or anything like that.28:52Hello, you can also verify by coming to the GUI of the controller, the primary active controller by going to monitor general system and clicking on redundancy, and, we can verify that the communications are up.29:00And that our primary chassis is chassis one and that is the active controller.29:19Okay, so let's say that we configured HA through catalyst center, but there's a couple of errors and something went wrong and it's not configured correctly. Inside of a blue chain here, what we're gonna see is a red chain and then your status is gonna change from duplex to supplex.29:27And you're gonna get a little analysis button, blue hyperlink that you can click on to verify what possibly went wrong when configuring HA through catalyst center. So if we go ahead and click on that blue hyper hyperlink there, you'll be brought to the HA SSO analysis page.29:47And there's gonna be a couple couple of reasoning activities going on here. It'll check the controller manageability, it'll run some show commands for the redundancy port in the RMI status.30:05And once it's done doing that, you'll have a couple of conclusions that you'll need to verify. So e.g. here we have five conclusions right now, we have to make sure that the power source is good, that the redundancy port link connectivity is good.30:21Double check the RP link and the RMI link and once, once you've done all the once you've done all that and you make sure that everything is good to go on the back end on the controller side, you can go ahead and click on run again and the conclusion should go down and disappear, but if if it's still failing I recommend opening.30:40Get attack case to troubleshoot it further.31:00Okay, so here let's go ahead and do a quick demo of the process of configuring a 90 hundred controller in HA. So.31:05We're brought to the plug and play screen here, we're not gonna we'll we'll get to the HA tab or HA section shortly, but basically we're bringing in our standby controller through plug and play. As you can see here WLC is HA.31:20We are configuring the wireless management IP, subnet mask gateway, and then that interface name is gonna be gate two here and not gate three because that's the wireless management interface. So i'm moving forward.31:38The date of the controller will go from unprovisioned to provision and then it should move from the unclaimed fields to the all field once we are provisioned here. And once we're good to go with the provisioning state.31:56We'll go back to the inventory configure HA, assign the redundancy management IPs, and then we'll click on the configure WLCHA, then both of the controllers will reboot, and then you'll notice the secondary controller here.32:15Disappear from the inventory after some time. And then once the secondary controller disappears you should see that blue chain next to the primary controller indicating that we have possibly configured HA.32:33In the through cattle center on both of the controllers. Okay, so now that we talk about how we can figure HA, we'll go ahead and discuss provisioning a 90 hundred controller. So before we go ahead and provision any device in.32:52In catalyst center, there's a couple of things that we need to make sure that are already done.33:12So the 1st thing is that device needs to be assigned to a site and depending on what type of device it is, it's either going to be a switching profile or a wireless profile. In our scenario since we have a 90 hundred wireless controller.33:17We're gonna select a wireless profile and assign it to that same site where that controller is. Then we're gonna have our primary and secondary managed AP locations and then any interfaces we want to push out to the controller.33:35This could be like a client VLAN or something along those lines. And then we'll have the model and advanced config, so we are back in our inventory page and NO time.33:49We are gonna go ahead and click on actions and click on provision provision and click on provision provision device. Next, we'll be brought to the configuration page and as I stated before there's a couple of WLC rules that we.34:09We need to make sure that we have checked.34:29Let's say you have like a foreign anchor scenario and you have an anchor controller that you're trying to provision, what you're gonna do is instead of clicking on active main WLC, you're gonna click on anchor and then you should be good to go there. But since we're not doing foreign anchor in our scenario today, we're just gonna click on.34:32Active mean WLC.34:52And then select our primary and secondary locations. And then we only have one layer two interface going out to the controller. If you had a layer three interface, you can you can go ahead and configure the IP address, the gateway and the subnet master here.34:54That's well.35:14And then finally, or next I I should say we are brought to the model config page and this is gonna be any configurations you want to push out to the SID. We have our WLAN profile name, our WLAN ID.35:15In the ENT.35:35So for the advanced configuration, right? This is gonna be referring to the CLI template. If we have any data zero or day end configuration templates that we wanna go ahead and push out to the controller, we have to make sure that we assign it to the.35:41Wireless network profile for that controller.36:00And if we did, it would populate here under the device having templates or NO templates page and then you would select that template and then it should be pushed out to the controller. Finally, we're brought to the summary page and if you.36:03Want to see all the information being pushed out. You can scroll up and down on this page to view that information as well. So before we go ahead and deploy, we'll look at the.36:21We'll we'll we'll need to verify if there's any issues with the pending operations or if our device is in compliance. If there were some kind of issue with device compliance or any issues with the config, you'll see it populate here in the provision device section.36:37And you won't be able to get past the screen until you fix all the errors and both are checked and ready to go.36:56So finally, we'll be brought to the configuration to be deployed page. This is gonna be all the information that you've seen under the network settings and what not be pushed out to the controller and what you can do is you can click on this expand option or tree view.37:06Or tree you to get a better view of what is being configured and pushed out to the controller. So once we verified all the information that is ready to be deployed, you can go ahead and click on deploy. Now that we clicked on deploy, it's gonna take a couple.37:25Minutes for.37:45Everything to get configured and you can see that we have a provision provision provisioning status field. If for whatever reason you don't see this field initially on your inventory, what you can do is you can click on this gear icon edit table co column.37:48And then in the, in the table columns, there should be an option for provisioning provisioning status and it should populate here in the inventory after you pick it.38:07And just a quick note too, if you only want to filter for the devices that you provisioned in catalyst center, we can come up to the focus view and the default is gonna be set to inventory, and then if you want to only filter for provision, what we can do is click on.38:17The provisioning tab here and we'll only get the.38:37We'll only get the controllers and the devices that we provision on the screen. So let's say that you want to drill down deeper into what's going on behind the scenes in the provision provisioning status. You can click on the details page here.38:44And then you'll be brought to the details of that 9800 controller, and you can see the date that it was configured on and then you can drill down even further into into the step by step provisioning process. So this is a great troubleshooting tool for tech, if you have.39:01Have any errors provisioning any devices in catalyst center.39:21Okay, so after we deployed the configuration, we want to verify on the controller what it what exactly got pushed, right? So in our scenario, as you can, as you saw on the on the summary page, we pushed some triple AAA servers to the controller, and you can verify that it got.39:28Pushed out to the wireless controller.39:48By coming to this server group page and then clicking under radius and then you can verify that that it was pushed out correctly because of the dNAC-radius name in front of the server IP address for, for that AAA server.39:51Next we have our profile. Here we have our profile name, Cisco ENT profile. The admin status for that profile is up and ready to go. So if we assign it to our APs.40:10Clients should start servicing this policy profile. And then finally we have our WLAN that we configured the ENT profile ENTWLAN, and then we have any model configs or advanced model configs that we pushed out to the SSID.40:27As well.40:46Okay, so, still talking about brownfield or Greenfield here, so how can we use the plug and play tool within catalyst center to also discover our newly added APs that we want to join the controller, right? So.40:49So there's a couple of different ways that we can do that.41:08We can either use the DNS discovery method or we can go ahead and use option 43. So we want to be careful in choosing what DNS discovery method that we use, right? So, most of you know that the old way or not or not the old way. Most of you know.41:11That the way to discover APs to the controller through DNS is through the use of cisco-cap web.controller.local domain. So for AP plug and play discovery with catalyst center, we wanna make sure that we do not use that one, right? So we want to make sure that we use the catalyst center.41:30Plug and play discovery DNS process, which is gonna be the PNP server.local domain and then this is whatever your host name is for your company or your organization. And then we also have DHCP option 43.41:51And we have this hack string here for option 43 and we have to make sure that we include all of these characters in the heck string, and within the hack string is going to be your catalyst center IP. So after the hacks of I.42:08You're gonna start talking out your catalyst center IP and then colon JA80 to close that option 43 stream. And then once the APs are discovered through, either DNS or option three.42:27Or option 43, discovery process for plug and play. We'll go through the claim process and get those APs to the controller and showing heat map generation on your catalyst center floor plan. Okay, so.42:44There's a couple of different ways that we can go ahead and do that. If we don't have the option 43 or DNS method available, we can actually do a manual import of devices. So we have a couple of different options. We have single add, we have bulk ad, and then we.43:02You have a smart account add. So let's say you have a smart account with smart licensing and you want to pull in APs that way, you should be able to link it through the smart account and get a CSV file of all the APs that you want to import.43:21For today's demo purposes, we're gonna do bulk ad and when we click on bulk ad before we even go ahead and upload ASV file, I want to make sure that we all download this file template, right? So this file template is going.43:38Going to be a guide on how the.43:57And how the files should be constructed. So the top line here is everything that needs to be included or option option optionally included. So we don't have to go all the way specific as interface name, if we want to go.44:02Only up to the wireless RF profile.44:22We can comment out the rest of the fields and should be good to go after that. So, once we're ready to go and we have our file constructed the way we want to, we can go ahead and import the file or upload the file as a.44:27File. If there was some kind of issue with the file, you would see a red X and you would just have to refer to the file template to verify what's wrong. But once everything is good to go with that file, you'll click on import devices.44:46And then you will see that we have two APs that we're trying to import here. We'll check the boxes and instead of clicking on add devices, we're gonna go ahead and click on add and claims so that we can go through that plug and play process.45:02So since we have that CSV file, right? We're not really gonna have to do much here when it comes to naming the devices and assigning it to a site. So, once we already filled out that CSV file, the device name, the device.45:17Type in site should already be filled out for you. So you shouldn't have to go through the pane of clicking a bunch of different options and going through your hierarchy and trying to find your floor and whatnot, right? So, if that's all good, good to go, we'll go ahead and hit next.45:37And then we have our our profile already to go as well as we saw in the in the construct there of the file, we have it set to typical. And once we're ready to go, if we want to view the preview of the configuration.45:57We can click on the blue hyperlink for each AP to make sure everything looks good. And if everything looks good, we'll go ahead and click on claim.46:18And once we click on claim, the process of claiming that the device should start. One thing to note, right? So if we're not using a discovery method of DNS or option 43, the source is going to be changed from network to you.46:26Yes sir.46:46So if we're using option 43 or DNS, the source is going to be network, but since we're using a uploaded CSV file, the source is going to be user. And a quick note here too, the entire planned APs, and once we go through the process, the IP and the MAC address of.46:46The devices should populate here as well.47:06So as we continue the onboarding workflow here of plug and play, we have the IP and MAC address, so we're moving along pretty well here. And then we have the day and scenario configuration preview. So we have the RF tag name, the policy tag name, the primary controller.47:09IP and name that we want the APs to join to. And once that, once the APs are going through that process and because it was trying to join this controller, the controller recognized that the APs have joined it and.47:28Center is now re syncing the controller in the inventory.47:48And once we are done with the pro with the provisioning of the two APs, because catalyst center resynced the nine 800 wireless controller, we can now see the APs in catalyst center under the inventory and we should be good to go there.47:53Hello, let's go ahead and talk about what gets pushed to the APs. Obviously we have our AP name here that we, that we configured. We have the AP location.48:12And then if our AP mode is fabric flex for local, we can come in here and configure that as well. And then also the country code in, on the geographic location in catalyst center should identify that.48:28For the AP as well. And moving forward, if we click on the tags next to the AP, right? So this little blue hyperlink here, if we click on that.48:45You'll be able to verify the AP properties from the wlans and policies, the site properties, if you have something other than the default AP joint profile, and then any other properties that get pushed to the AP as well.49:03And here we are in the four for our site that we added the APS to and you can see that because they're joined to the controller and ready to service clients.49:22You can see the heat map has been generated successfully. Okay, so now we'll go ahead and look at the AP onboarding demo here, but we'll go ahead and do that import of the CSV file like I talked about previously.49:37We'll import the two APs and click on add and claim, and as previously stated, not much gonna do here since everything's already configured in that CSV file.49:57So keep clicking on next until we get to the claim field, and now we're gonna go through that clean process and after a little bit of time.50:13The APs should start populating the IP and MAC address and move from the unclaimed to the inventory page in cattle center. I will veri we'll verify that after, after the full.50:31Workflow state has one from onboard to provision. So now that they're provisioned, they should be in the inventory and they are, and if you want to verify the heat map information, we'll go drill down into the hierarchy.50:48Oh. Go to the floor, and now you can see that our two APs are generating heat map information.51:06And if we want to go to the controller, we can see that we have two APs joined now, and then we can verify the properties that get get pushed to the controller or to the APs as well. Okay, so with that, I'm gonna go ahead and pass the ball back over to Mannon and.51:23And she's gonna go ahead and talk about planning and deployment.51:43All right, so let's get a step, let's take a step back for a minute and get back to planning and deployment. So, we did mention the hierarchy that we have in Catalos Center and you saw how to brownfield the controller and the AP.51:52And you saw how to greenfield controllers and APs, however as you know, a wireless network is always living. So, sometimes you'll need to export or create new maps.52:12In your catalyst center.52:32So, going back to our network hierarchy here, I'll get back my laser pointer. So I'm here in network network hierarchy. I can go into my buildings and export just the map of a building in Echow format.52:33I know there was a question in the chat about the formats that are supported. For now it's echo how there is there's works in progress that remains.52:54Stay tuned. Let's put it this way. Stay tuned. All right, so if I export it to Echo Pro, that map, I can export it as a project. So, the project then can be edited. I have all the information that I have for my APs and.53:09Center and I can actually add to the, to the the site survey, all the, the.53:30Divisions, walls, attenuation areas, and then I'll come back and import my echo project again. So as you see, now I have my full plan, and I also have my wall design attenuation, and this will.53:37Serve eventually for my three D maps.53:57So if I would like to bind and that's something that I, that I spoke of earlier on, if I would like to bind my APs with APs that have been discovered in PNP, the one thing I can do is actually.54:03To come here to my APs and I'm going to oopsy, you missed it. All right. So I will select them and rename them and I have a demo that's coming. You'll see it more clearly.54:18And my APs will be assigned to the site, alright? And they'll turn green as such. So here we go. Before we go into a clear demo, I would like to.54:37To remind you that there's another cool thing that you can do in your hierarchy and that is generate a, one page or two page report of the.54:57Of the list of APs that you have on the floor if you have to send someone to the field to find them and you can also get the map for for it or just select a list of AP names with the coordinates and the height at which they are. So it could be the installers, it could be someone that.55:08That's trying to troubleshoot a an AP and they don't know exactly where it is in the building. So you could send this PDF, to, to your staff members and they would be easily able to find the APs on site.55:28Alright, so without further ado, let's move into the demo and hopefully I don't mess up my re my recording this time. So if I come here to this, to this hierarchy and that's where I'm going to export.55:46My maps, here we go. I'm selecting the Echo project as a format. So I go into, into exporting, I'll open AI.56:04Select my file. Okay so I have my two planned APs. I'm going to through the magic of demos, design the fastest building, the fastest floor around. So as you.56:23Can see I'm adding all my attenuation areas, my, my walls and all the sources of, and obstacles that could play into my wireless design.56:38All right, don't we all wish we could draw this fast? So as you could see, oopsy, I messed around with my recording again. All right.56:52All right, we have our final design, so this is what the coverage will look like. We're going to save that and import it back in caller center and this is when.57:19I will find my still struggling with my recording, I apologize. This is where I will bind my both my APs that I have planned on my map.57:40So those two, I'm going to bind them with their name. See I'm calling them exactly what my planned AP is supposed to be named as. I'm selecting my site and my floor.58:01Signing them, signing the configuration as well, and here we go.58:21So if we go back to our map, well, you can see that my two APs are now real APs that are configured with the right name and they're NO longer planned APs.58:41And the cool thing that you have because you imported in Echo from is you have designed those attenuation areas. So using the three D map, you can actually view the coverage of your APs, and that coverage is rendered in three D.59:00So that gives you an idea of, how the coverage will look in three D in the space and that could be a good source to aid in your troubleshooting.59:22So with that being said, going back to brownfield, because there's a lot of questions in chat that have been asked, Tyler, why don't you go ahead and explain the process and the new way of doing things?59:40Sure, thanks Mannon. I'll take back the ball here alright cool. So, up to this point, right? Everything that we pretty much talked about had to deal with the Greenfield deployment.59:57Now we're gonna touch on a couple of things for brownfield scenarios. Here we go. My pointer back here ok so any old versions of code in catalyst center or DNA.01:00:13Hunter, you might be aware of the old feature for learned device configuration.01:00:33We decided that it was best to officially deprecate this feature in the, in the newer version of software just because that whenever we try to learn the controller configuration.01:00:41There would just be either way too many issues or parity differences between catalyst center and the controller and it just wouldn't work well enough for some customers, right? So in today's world, we have decided to come.01:00:55Up with a new feature called Canvas Automation with wireless, right?01:01:15So here we have a 9800 controller, so if we go if we take a step back, if we go to the inventory and we find our 9800 controller that we want to use with campus automation, what we'll do is we'll click on view device details.01:01:20Sales for the 90 hundred controller in the inventory page and then you should be brought to this device page here for the controller. And at the top of the page, there should be an option for you to enable for device configuration.01:01:40For that controller. So if I, if I say per device configuration, just know that I'm talking about campus automation with wireless as well. So what it what it what does per device configuration exactly mean, right? So.01:01:57When we enable it on a controller, we are essentially bringing in the 9800 GUI that we can do all of our config configurations on on the controller and we are bringing it into catalyst center.01:02:14And we in in in the later software versions today, we should have pretty close feature parity to one another. If for whatever reason you go through the configuration page here.01:02:30For the 90 hundred per device config and that, and that you find that there's an issue with a configuration missing that you think should be here that's on the controller. What you can go ahead and do is click on the question mark icon and make a wish and it will send to our business.01:02:48Unit and potentially get implemented in in a later release.01:03:08So if you want to go ahead and create like a new SSID or RF tag or site tags or whatever it maybe for your 9800 controller, we can go ahead and certainly do so. All you really have to do is click on add, and create your new.01:03:14New WLAN and once you create your new WLAN in here.01:03:34In in catalyst center per device config, it should get pushed out to the controller pretty pretty pretty easily. Now let's say, you, you forgot that you had per device configuration enabled on it on the on Catalyst Center, but you went ahead and decided to create.01:03:38A a whole ID on your controller.01:03:58So that's ok. What we can do is we can come into catalyst center and we can go ahead and re sync the device into Catalyst Center and after we resync the device, the WLAN that you created on the 9800 controller should also be populated here in the WLAN profile.01:04:01Now we also have all of our profiles, all the default ones that you see on the controller, right? Or there should be a total of seven of them. So e.g., we can name the description of of our profile in.01:04:23We have the option to enable or disable the status of that our profile as well.01:04:41Okay. Okay, so now let's go ahead and talk about Brownfield AP plug and play. Hello, let's say that we have an existing 9800 controller in production.01:04:51We have existing tags and profiles and we have an AP already joined to the controller within within we already we already have an AP joined to the controller. What we'll do is we'll go ahead and make sure that that 90 hundred is discovered in cattle.01:05:09Hunter added to a client and we have to make sure that telemetry is enabled as well.01:05:28So, just a quick note, on the 90 hundred, right? We, we have this option to tag rules with naming the policy tag, site tag and RF tag. That used to be the old way of doing things.01:05:33If you want to go ahead and quickly configure your APS with the policy tag, and things like that.01:05:53But that found to still be pretty slow, so that's why we came up with the, the per device configuration on the controller to be a little bit faster. Okay, so we have our AP plug and play onboarding template.01:06:00And, this is essentially gonna be used in order for our new APs to join the controller or our existing nine 800 controller, right? So we have our.01:06:18Plug and play template for APs. We want to make sure that the project name is onboarding configuration. We want to make sure we have the regular template type and select the appropriate template language that you find yourself most comfortable with.01:06:35For me, in the easiest language out there right now is ginger. So I just default to that whenever I'm dealing with templates, and we want to make sure that the software type for that template language is iOS actually. And then we also have to make sure that the device family.01:06:52Is wireless controller as well.01:07:12So what gets configured inside of this template? Well, we can go pretty deep or we can only have a couple of lines if you just wanna, have one line in that template, right? We can go as deep as the, this top one here with with defining the WLC.01:07:16The IP, name, IP address and WLC name.01:07:36And all the way to the RF tag name or we can simply define the primary WLC IP and the WLC name. So, just like we would in the greenfield scenario, right? We're gonna have the CSC file to import into catalyst center report.01:07:41Plug and play, and instead, for the brownfield side of things, so it's gonna be a little bit different. We're not gonna go ahead in a final site, so as you can see here in 2nd and 3rd line, we comment out the site.01:08:01The heightline here, just because it should already know what location it should be at when when the AP has joined the controller. Also too, there are gonna be two device types to pick from. We want to make sure that we select a AP instead of mobility.01:08:18The express option. Otherwise, we're gonna have some issues for the AP joining the controller. So we'll go back to the plug and play screen here and we'll import the AP plug and play brownfield CSV file, and we'll import the two APs.01:08:38And we'll click on add and clean and make sure this time we're not gonna assign a site here. We're gonna leave that blank, and then we're gonna make sure that the device type is sites to AP. Now, what's gonna be a little bit different is we're gonna come.01:08:57To the.01:09:17Configuration page to assign a template and we're gonna assign that AP plug and play template that we saw previously and click on assign template, make sure we have the right template here. And once we're ready to go, we can see that the AP or the template is.01:09:20Being applied to to these two APs and then we can go ahead and actually get to the summary page. And then if you want to go ahead and again preview the configuration, if everything looks good, then we'll go ahead and click on claim.01:09:40Hello, we are back to the claiming process and the onboarding progress should change to provisioned and populate the IP and the MAC address of the AP and also the software version of the AP.01:09:57And once that is done, you should see that the AP is already joined to the controller. So we'll do a quick quick demo here for AP plug and play. So as you can see, I currently only have one AP.01:10:13AP joined to this controller?01:10:32And we'll go ahead and onboard the two APs that you see here in the network hierarchy. So we'll go to the plug and play. Oh, we'll go to the template page 1st. Make sure we have that template configured correctly.01:10:34And make sure the project name is onboarding configuration and then we're gonna go ahead and go to the plug and play screen and then click on add devices, import that brownfield.01:10:53AP plug and play CSV file, click on the two APs, don't assign a site this time, make sure the device type is AP. Now we're gonna attach that template. And after we attach the template to the two APs.01:11:12We'll finish the claiming process and if we can move this along a little bit quicker, we'll just do a shut, NO shut of the APs, and you can see the IP and the Mac address populate populated, the APs are provisioned.01:11:28And now if we go back to the controller, we can now see that we have a total of three APs on the controller with all of the correct tags applied to the AP. And we can also see see the heat map generation as well.01:11:47Oh. Okay so moving forward here, I'm gonna talk about a couple of brownfield workflows that we can use within catalyst center. And there's gonna be a couple of workflows that I'm gonna hide.01:12:05Highlight today. I'm not gonna highlight all of them just because there's many in the list.01:12:24I'll highlight highlight the important ones for us today and the 1st one is going to be the replace device workflow, and this is gonna be for any faulty APs that you have to RMA in your network.01:12:29If we go ahead and use the workflow replace device, we should be able to easily swap the old AP model serial number out and have that one generated in Catalyst Center and on your heat map as well.01:12:46And then we have the AP refresh workflow. Basically this workflow is going to allow us to migrate from old Wi Fi standards to new Wi Fi standards. And then we have a configure AP workflow. This workflow here is one that a lot of my customers.01:13:03Rooms.01:13:23Really get the most use out of when it comes to all the wireless workflows, but essentially what, what we can do is we can change the settings and the radio parameters and then what I find very beneficial is we can configure the HA tabs on the APs, like the primary and secondary.01:13:24Very intertitiary option. And then finally, we have AI enhanced RRM workflow.01:13:44And this is for if you want Catalyst Center to be the RF group leader and make the decisions for your RF environment. So, on your workflow page, it might look a little bit different. You'll have a combination of both the wireless and the wired workflow.01:13:50If you just want to filter out the wired stuff and don't worry about that, what you'll do is you'll have to click on this little radio icon on the dashlet and when you when you do that, do that, it'll only filter for your wireless workflows.01:14:10So let's go ahead and dive into the configure AP workflow, create a task name, and we'll be brought to this page here. And as you can see, there's a couple of different options, but for today we'll just talk about the configure AP and radio parameter.01:14:28If you don't wanna go ahead and go through all the steps here, what you can do is you can uncheck this box here and you can just modify the AP name if you want to or if you want to modify the AP name and configure the HA options for the APs, I would, I would select these options here.01:14:50Here. Otherwise, just go ahead and configure all the radio permit parameters if you want. So we'll, we'll we'll drill down into the site in the floor where we have our AP assigned. Just a quick note too.01:15:10We do have the option to select up up to a certain number of APs for bulk for bulk configuration pushes. I can't remember that number right now, but it's documented somewhere, so, but for for our scenario, we're just gonna pick one AP today and push out configs.01:15:28So if we want want to modify the AP name, we can do that by either creating a naming convention or uploading a CSV file. If we create a naming convention, we can create that AP name and.01:15:47However, however many number of APs that we pick up to, we can apply a pattern and all the APs will have that pattern of that AP name. And then we'll go ahead and hit click on next.01:16:03Here is where, I think a lot of you guys will get the most out of this workflow is the high availability option, right? But the old way was to go into the controller and go into each individual AP and go one by one in filtering out the.01:16:20Primary, secondary and tertiary controllers, but all we have to do today is select the primary controller name and the secondary controller name and then we're done. So if we have to turn the radios on and off for any particular APs.01:16:38We can go ahead and do that for any of the radio option five, 2.4 in 6 ghz radio parameters and as well as the XOR or try radio or dual band.01:16:56And finally, we'll be brought to the template use page. So if you find that there's a template that you want to use after one time so you don't have to go through the process again, you can save this as a template.01:17:13And when you save it as a template, you should be able to reuse this template for other APs. So finally, we'll go ahead and hit next and be brought to a summary page, so on the summary page.01:17:30We'll go ahead and verify all the configurations that are gonna get pushed out to the APs and you can see that under the configure AP parameters. You can click the dropdowns here.01:17:47Right, so see how many APs you've selected, if you modified any of the AP names so on and so forth. And finally, we'll click on preview and deploy.01:18:03And after we click on preview and deploy, you'll, you'll be brought to the configuration to be deployed page and after you verify all the information in the config preview page is correct and you click deploy, it should put.01:18:18Push it out to the APs and your APs should be configured.01:18:38How you want them according to that workflow. And with that, I will pass the ball back over to May and we will close out the question. Alright, so as you can see.01:18:43Catalyst Center does provide you with all the tools that to support you in all phases of the wireless life cycle. All these tools are integrated in Catalyst Center and TNP is a great tool to deploy wlcs and APs fast both in Brownfield and Greenfield network.01:19:03Works. So, intent based configuration is really there to support you with wireless configuration.01:19:22So lots of you have filed in questions through our Q and A thank you for that. If we haven't addressed them, we are taking notes and we might reach out to you to answer them as as time passes for.01:19:36Additional events, recordings and more resources, please visit us in our corner of the Cisco word at Cisco verse at the link that you see on your screen. And if you'd like further one on one engagements with us, the csss either on.01:19:56Catalyst Center, SDA, SD WAN, our practice is quite varied, so reach out to your account team representatives, and it'll be our pleasure to assist.01:20:16So as we conclude this session, I would like to remind you that when we wrap up, you will get a short survey about the session. So, feel free to to give us your feedback and tell us more about your experience and how.01:20:29We did.01:20:49And I would, I would close on that. So thank you for your time and I will see you soon. Thank you.01:20:50