• Through Cisco Crosswork Network Controller version 3.0, Change Automation used Cisco Software Manager (CSM) for package installations. Starting with Cisco Crosswork Network Controller 4.0, Software Image Management (SWIM) replaces CSM. SWIM supports the following functionalities:

  • Import software images from external server, local file, or a managed device into the SWIM repository.

  • Distribution of software image from SWIM repository to the device.

  • Activation of software images.

  • Additional platform-specific functionality, such as committing active images on IOS-XR devices.

• This release of Change Automation introduces support for Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and its Layered Service Architecture (LSA).

• Enhanced the scalability in Cisco Crosswork Network Controller 4.0 to 4.1.

• Added the ability to enable KPI on selected interfaces.

• Added the ability to trigger Playbooks based on different Alert levels.

For information on how to use Cisco Crosswork Change Automation see the "Automate Network Changes" chapter in the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.

• For information about using flexible Playbook development tools, see Custom Playbooks tutorial in Cisco Crosswork Change Automation Developer Guide on Cisco DevNet (https://developer.cisco.com/).

• When using dynamic tags to run a playbook on a set of devices, the playbook will be executed on groups of 20 devices at a time until the playbook has been run on all of the tagged devices.

For information on how to use Cisco Crosswork Health Insights, see the "Monitor Network Health and KPIs" chapter in the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.

• Group the KPIs within a KPI Profile for monitoring relevant device metrics. For best results, limit to 10 KPIs per KPI Profile. Maximum number of KPIs that can be supported within a KPI profile is 50.

  Note

  The KPIs vary in the amount of data they collect. Although the system allows for up to 50 KPIs/KPI profiles, care must be taken to ensure that you have both license and Crosswork Data Gateway capacity in place before deploying the KPIs. For more information, see the section Enable KPI Profile on Devices in Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.

• For optimal performance, enable a KPI Profile in batches of no more than 100 devices.

  Note

  When you are enabling KPI profiles on devices, ensure that sufficient capacity is available on Cisco Crosswork Data Gateway. If sufficient capacity is not available, it may cause overload and outage. For more information, see the section Enable KPI Profile on Devices in Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.

• For best system performance, use the default KPI cadence.

  Note	KPI cadence is set based on the nature of the KPI. Any decisions about using a lower cadence (for example, as low as 10 seconds) should be reviewed with Cisco Professional Services.

• Sometimes, under certain load conditions, the execution of a Playbook times out.

  • If it continues to fail, try changing the time out for the job.

  • If it fails because of the device being locked, try changing the device state to DOWN and UP again.

• While scheduling playbooks across a dynamic group tag, the corresponding job set screen for the job in the Job History page will not display the relevant devices, until the job is scheduled for execution.

• Running a Playbook on multiple devices at the same time with different collection_type parameter values may result in failure. Re-executing the failed Playbook will resolve the issue.

• Under extreme load conditions, Cisco Crosswork Change Automation may fail to clean up the collection jobs that were created. These stale collections jobs can be deleted using API.

• With SWIM APIs, when you execute the remove flow, it deactivates the image and then removes it.

• After a KPI Profile is enabled, editing the cadence and threshold parameter for any of the associated KPIs can be achieved using one of the three methods below:

  • Create a custom KPI with the required cadence and threshold parameters and associate it with the existing KPI Profile.

  • Create a new KPI Profile with the relevant KPIs associated. Update the cadence and alert parameters before enabling this new KPI Profile.

  • Disable the KPI Profile and perform the modifications on the relevant associated KPIs. Then re-enable the KPI Profile.

• For custom KPIs:

  • While creating a custom KPI that makes direct use of APIs, you must select the full sensor path to the leaf sensors (not a partial sensor path) up to a certain hierarchy (gather path).

  • All leaf sensor paths are reserved for that KPI's use only.

  • For more information on custom KPIs, see the chapter "Monitor Network Health and KPIs" in Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.

• Any Cisco Crosswork Health Insights job stuck in the processing state that does not complete within the stipulated time out of 60 minutes will be marked as "failed". After addressing any underlying issues (for example, device connectivity, credentials or NSO sync, and so on), the same job must be reapplied.

• Filtering is case sensitive for the Manage KPIs and Enable-Disable KPI Profiles pages.

• For using Cisco Crosswork Health Insights alert forwarding functionality, you must setup one Alert provider with the correct credentials.

• You can view KPI graphical data in the Cisco Crosswork UI for the last 72 hours only. To see this data, go to the Grafana dashboard (https://<IPaddress:port>/robot-grafana/) and select the desired KPI.

• After creating an interface KPI profile, the KPI Monitoring Preferences are set. If more than one KPI profile is created with the same KPI but different KPI Monitoring Preferences, and is linked to a device, the alerts are not segregated per interface or profile level in the Alert Dashboard page.