Overview

Audience

This guide is designed for service provider operators and tenants who deploy, manage, configure Cisco MSX SD-WAN service pack, and troubleshoot various SD-WAN service issues.

What’s New in Cisco MSX 4.1 for SD-WAN Services

Table 1. What's New in Cisco MSX 4.1 for Cisco SD-WAN and Meraki SD-WAN Services

Feature

Description

Email Address Support in SD-WAN Orchestration Settings

A new email field is added to the SD-WAN Orchestration Settings that notifies the user about the progress in the SD-WAN processes.

Only three email domains are accepted in this field: gmail.com, cisco.com, and external.cisco.com.

For more information, see Configuring Cisco SD-WAN Orchestrator Settings.

Overview of Cisco MSX

With Cisco MSX solution, you can automate end-to-end provisioning for different use cases and service topologies. Each release of the MSX provides out-of-box capabilities to orchestrate particular use cases, also called service packs (such as Cisco MSX SD-Branch, Cisco MSX Cloud UTD, and Cisco MSX Managed Device).

For detailed information about Cisco MSX solution, see the Cisco Managed Services Accelerator (MSX) Solution Overview.

The Cisco SD-WAN and Meraki SD-WAN service packs are a suite of prepackaged software capabilities that fully automate the end-to-end SD-WAN service creation. With these fully validated service level packages, end customers can quickly turn on, control, and assure cloud-based WAN services that are offered by the service provider.

This section contains the following topics:

Cisco SD-WAN Service

Cisco MSX enables service providers to deploy and manage SD-WAN services for their customers. The deployment of an SD-WAN service in the context of a managed service requires deployment per customer and includes the SD-WAN management control plane (vManage, vBond and vSmart), and the corresponding data plane (vEdge and cEdge).

The Cisco SD-WAN service pack consists of:

  • vManage— Cisco’s GUI based centralized management and provisioning platform for Day 0, Day 1 and Day n+ for the entire Cisco SD-WAN infrastructure. You can login to the Cisco vManage dashboard to centrally manage the WAN. Cisco vManage provides the ability to manage all aspects of the WAN from provisioning, monitoring, and upgrading routers to application visibility and troubleshooting the WAN.

  • vBond—The vBond facilitates the initial bring-up by performing initial authentication and authorization of all elements into the network. vBond provides the information on how each of the components connects to other components. It plays an important role in enabling devices that sit behind the NAT to communicate with the network.

  • vSmart Controller—The vSmart controllers establish the secure SSL connections to all other components in the network, and run an Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) to exchange routing, security, and policy information. The centralized policy engine in vSmart provides policy constructs to manipulate routing information, access control, segmentation, extranets, and service chaining.

  • vEdge and cEdge (IOS XE) Routers—These routers (physical and cloud) establishes secure connectivity to all of the control components and also establishes IPSec sessions with other routers in the WAN network. These routers can be used as a Virtual Network Function (VNF) deployment at the branch. NFV Infrastructure Software (NFVIS) platform on Cisco Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) facilitates the deployment and operation of VNFs and hardware components.

Some of the advantages of the Cisco MSX SD-WAN service pack are:

  • User interface portal for ordering service (Control Plane and Data Plane Connectivity) and network visualization.

  • Lifecycle management of services.

  • Site and device activation.

  • Site level monitoring and tunnel health reporting.

  • Traffic policy management.

The table below lists supported versions of Cisco SD-WAN on Cisco MSX :

Table 2. Cisco SD-WAN and MSX Version Compatibility Matrix

Cisco MSX Release

Cisco SD-WAN Release

4.1 20.5.1 and earlier releases
4.0 20.5.1 and earlier releases
3.10 20.4.1 and earlier releases.
3.9.0 20.1.1 and earlier releases
3.8.0 19.3.0 and earlier releases
3.7.0 19.2.0 and earlier releases
3.6.0 19.1.0 and earlier releases
3.5.1/3.5.2 18.4.0 and earlier releases
3.5.0 18.3.0 and earlier releases

Cisco Meraki SD-WAN Service

All Cisco Meraki security appliances comes with SD-WAN capabilities that allow administrators to dynamically adjust to changing WAN conditions without the need for manual intervention. By providing granular control over how certain traffic types respond to changes in WAN availability and performance, SD-WAN can ensure optimal performance for critical applications and help to avoid disruptions of highly performance-sensitive traffic, such as VoIP

Using Meraki SD-WAN on MSX, service providers can add or remove networks (equivalent to adding sites in Cisco SD-WAN) and display uplink information about a device.

Some of the advantages of using Cisco Meraki SD-WAN on MSX are:

  • User interface portal for ordering Meraki SD-WAN service for tenant.

  • Ability to attach to a Meraki organization established for the Tenant.

  • Lifecycle management of services.

  • Control Plane and Data Plane Connectivity and network visualization.

  • Site and device activation by selecting and applying configurations on Meraki networks.

  • Site level monitoring with uplink interface details.

  • Traffic policy management

The following are the Meraki wireless and combined device types currently supported on Cisco MSX:

  • SD-WAN appliance devices:

    • MX64, MX65, MX67, and MX68 required for a small branch setup.

    • MX84 and MX100 required for a medium branch setup.

    • MX250 and MX450 required for a large branch/campus setup.

  • vMX device types for virtual devices.

  • MR device types for wireless

  • MS series of access switches

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