Overview

This is a post-installation document intended to cover the steps required to get up and running with the Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector application. It provides instructions on how to configure the collectors to generate network models according to your specifications.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Introducing Cisco Crosswork Planning

Cisco Crosswork Planning runs on the Cisco Crosswork infrastructure and is part of the Cisco Crosswork Network Automation suite of products.

Cisco Crosswork Planning provides tools to create and maintain a model of the current network through the continual monitoring and analysis of the network, and the traffic demands that are placed on it. At a given time, this network model contains all relevant information about a network, including topology, configuration, and traffic information. You can use this information as a basis for analyzing the impact on the network due to changes in traffic demands, paths, node and link failures, network optimizations, or other changes.

These are some of the important features of Cisco Crosswork Planning.

  • Traffic engineering and network optimization—Compute TE LSP configuration to meet service level requirements, perform capacity management, and perform local or global optimization in order to maximize efficiency of deployed network resources.

  • Demand engineering—Examine the impact on network traffic flow of adding, removing, or modifying traffic demands on the network.

  • Topology and predictive analysis—Observe the impact to network performance of changes in the network topology, which is driven either by design or by network failures.

  • TE tunnel programming—Examine the impact of modifying tunnel parameters, such as the tunnel path and reserved bandwidth.

  • Class of service (CoS)-aware bandwidth on demand—Examine existing network traffic and demands, and admit a set of service-class-specific demands between routers.

Cisco Crosswork Planning comprises the following two components. These components run independently of each other and you can enable/disable them based on your requirements.

  • Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector

    Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector consists of a set of services that create, maintain, and archive a model of the current network through continual monitoring and analysis of the network, and the traffic demands that are placed on it.

  • Cisco Crosswork Planning Design

    Cisco Crosswork Planning Design is a network design and planning tool that helps network engineers and operators predict growth in their network, simulate failures, and optimize the network design to meet performance objectives while minimizing cost.

System Overview

Cisco Crosswork Planning runs on the Crosswork infrastructure. The Cisco Crosswork Planning Design and Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector applications are packaged as separate components and can be enabled/disabled as per your requirements. These two applications run independently of each other. The communication between Cisco Crosswork Planning Design and the archive on the Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector to import network models happens over well-defined APIs.

Figure 1. System Overview

Collectors in Cisco Crosswork Planning

A Collector is a package that populates parts of the abstract network model, querying the network to do so. Most collectors operate as follows:

  1. They read a source network model (or simply, a source model).

  2. They augment the source model with information obtained from the actual network.

  3. They produce a destination network model (or simply, a destination model) with the resulting model.

Cisco Crosswork Planning includes several different collectors, such as:

  • Topology Collectors—Populates a basic network model with topology information (nodes, interfaces, circuits) based on the discovered IGP database augmented by SNMP queries and SR-PCE. The topology collectors do not have a source model.

  • LSP Collector—Augments a source model with LSP information, producing a destination model with the extra information.

  • Traffic Collector—Augments a source model with traffic statistics polled from the network, producing a new destination model with extra information.

  • Layout Collector—Adds layout properties to a source model to improve visualization. It produces a new destination model with the extra layout information. The collector records changes to the layout properties, so when the source model changes and the destination model is updated, the layout properties in the destination model are updated accordingly.

For a comprehensive list of all the collectors supported in Cisco Crosswork Planning, see Collector Descriptions.

Network Models and Plan File

Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector application produces network models, which can be built from an actual network by combining information from different collectors. A model building chain is an arrangement of collectors organized in such a way as to produce a network model with the desired information. The network model is saved in a plan file (.pln format) which can be viewed or downloaded from the Cisco Crosswork Planning Design application.

Aggregation of Collectors

In Cisco Crosswork Planning, two levels of data aggregation (consolidation) happens with the help of following aggregators:

For more details, see the following topics:

Delta Aggregation Rules Engine (DARE)

The DARE aggregator is a Cisco Crosswork Planning component that brings together various collectors, selects model information from each of them, and consolidates the information into a single model. Primarily DARE consolidates all topology collectors' data.

Simple Aggregation Engine (SAgE)

Simple Aggregation Engine (SAgE) is a Cisco Crosswork Planning component which consolidates all the network information such as traffic, inventory, layout, multicast, NetFlow, and demands. It aggregates these changes along with the topology changes from DARE network into the final network. The network information from all the collectors is written into plan files. The network changes can be archived from SAgE.

SAgE aggregator enables to run traffic collection, inventory collection, layout, and so on in parallel.

By default, all collectors are included in the aggregation during collection configuration. You can choose to exclude any collector from aggregation while scheduling the collection. For details, see Aggregate Collector Outputs.

Generation of Network Models

Network models are generated on completion of each level of aggregation. First model is generated as the output of DARE aggregation (see Delta Aggregation Rules Engine (DARE)). This file is used by the components such as traffic, inventory, layout, netflow, demands as data source. Once the SAgE aggregation completes (see Simple Aggregation Engine (SAgE)), it generates the second file, the final network model, which is the final output of the aggregated collected data.

Log In and Log Out

Cisco Crosswork Planning is a browser-based application. For details on supported browser versions, see the "Supported Web Browsers" section in the Cisco Crosswork Planning 7.0 Installation Guide.

After installing Cisco Crosswork Planning, you can access the Cisco Crosswork Planning UI using the following steps.

Procedure

Step 1

Open a web browser and enter:

https://<Crosswork Management Network Virtual IP (IPv4)>:30603/

When you access Cisco Crosswork Planning from your browser for the first time, some browsers display a warning that the site is untrusted. When this happens, follow the prompts to add a security exception and download the self-signed certificate from the server. After you do this, the browser accepts the Cisco Crosswork Planning server as a trusted site in all subsequent logins.

Step 2

The Cisco Crosswork Planning's browser-based user interface displays the login window. Enter your username and password. The default administrator user name and password is admin. This account is created automatically at installation. The initial password for this account must be changed during installation verification. Cisco strongly recommends that you keep the default administrator credential secure, and never use it for routine logins. Instead, create new user roles with appropriate privileges and assign new users to those roles. At least one of the users you create should be assigned the "administrator" role.

Step 3

Click Login.

Step 4

To log out, click in the top right of the main window and choose Logout.

Note

 

Logging out while working on a plan file does not result in closing of the file; it remains open.

Dashboard

After successful login, the Dashboard page opens. The Dashboard page provides an at-a-glance operational summary of Cisco Crosswork Planning. The dashboard is made up of a series of dashlets. The dashlets included in your dashboard depend on which Cisco Crosswork Planning application is installed. For example, the Collections and Archive network models dashlets are displayed only if you have installed the Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector application. The My network design models, My design jobs, and Design engine dashlets are displayed only if you have installed the Cisco Crosswork Planning Design application.

Links in each dashlet allow you to explore further details. This helps to navigate to the desired pages easily.

Figure 2. Dashboard View

Use the Customize view button at the top right corner to customize how the dashlets appear. For details, see the Customize the View of the Dashboard topic in the Cisco Crosswork Planning Design 7.0 User Guide.