Overview

This guide explains the requirements and processes to install and upgrade Cisco Crosswork Planning. For detailed information on how to use the Cisco Crosswork Planning Design and Cisco Crosswork Planning Collector applications, see the Cisco Crosswork Planning Design 7.1 User Guide and Cisco Crosswork Planning 7.1 Collection Setup and Administration.

This section contains the following topics:

Audience

This guide is for experienced network users and operators who want to install Cisco Crosswork Planning in their network. This guide assumes that you are familiar with

  • using a Docker container

  • running scripts in Python

  • deploying OVF templates using VMware vCenter, and

  • deploying using OVF tool.

Core capabilities of 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 a model of the existing network by continuously monitoring the network and its traffic demands. 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.

Key features

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 applications

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. For more information on this application, see Cisco Crosswork Planning 7.1 Collection Setup and Administration.

  • 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 design to meet performance objectives while minimizing cost. For more information on this application, see Cisco Crosswork Planning Design 7.1 User Guide.