Cisco MSX Managed Device Service Pack Overview

Cisco MSX is an open software platform that enables service providers to create and manage services across physical and virtual network elements. The Cisco MSX solution utilizes Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and enables service providers to provide their customers with a flexible selection of services that are easily customized through a self-service portal. It reduces the costs for service creation, customer acquisition, service fulfillment, time to repair, and maintenance.

With the Cisco MSX solution, you can automate end-to-end provisioning for different use cases and service topologies. Each release of the Cisco MSX provides out-of-the-box capabilities to orchestrate particular use cases, also called service packs (such as Cisco MSX SD-WAN, Cisco MSX Managed Device, and Cisco MSX Enterprise Access). The Cisco MSX service packs are a suite of prepackaged software capabilities that fully automate the end-to-end service creation including ordering, service chaining, orchestration, service assurance, user self-care, real-time performance reporting, and user-defined policy changes. With these fully validated service level packages, end userscan quickly turn on, control, and assure cloud-based managed services offered by the service provider.

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

This chapter contains the following topic:

Overview

The Managed Device service pack provides the ability for the service providers to manage the configurations of their customer devices through a self-service portal in an operator-driven configuration template environment.

The Cisco MSX Managed Device service pack allows you to onboard devices located at the customer premise (CPEs) and apply or manage configuration settings remotely from its Network Operations Center (NOC). The service providers can prepare parameterized configuration template files and deploy them on the CPEs. Using the Managed Device service pack, device deployment and its configurations are simplified.

Some of the advantages are:

  • Zero-touch provisioning for initial device connectivity through the PnP server process.

  • Service provisioning of on-premise routers through devices and VNFs.

  • User Interface portal for templates configuration, ordering service, and performance or fault monitoring.

The following are some of the key concepts in the Cisco MSX Managed Device service pack:

  • Device Models: Device models are the pre-defined set of constructs available in Cisco MSX for devices, which enables the users to capture the essential metrics data for a device. Cisco MSX Managed Device service pack provides metrics for Cisco IOS devices.

    To facilitate the metrics data collection for the new device types, the device model construct should be modified to capture the details that are utilized to collect metrics for these new device types. For more information, see the topic 'Preparing Device Model Information for New Device Type'.

  • Device Templates: The device templates have parameters that are used to define a device's complete operational configuration.

    A device template, when applied to a service ordering workflow, gathers the parameter values entered during the service ordering process. These values are then passed to the Cisco MSX orchestration engine (NSO) to configure the devices.

    The device templates are created from the device CLI configurations.

  • Adding a Device: Using the Managed Device service pack, service providers can onboard devices located at customer premises into their network to apply and manage configurations remotely from their Network Operations Centre (NOC). This functionality allows you to onboard the devices and to apply templates during the add device procedure. For more information, see the topic 'Adding a Device'.

  • Bulk Imports: The bulk import option allows you to import multiple devices at once into Cisco MSX. The Site Template file allows you to add multiple devices and also apply the templates. For more information, see the topic on 'Importing Multiple Devices'.

  • Onboarding New Device Type: Out-of-the-box, Managed Device service pack consists of Cisco IOS Network Elements Driver (NED), which allows to onboard any Cisco IOS-XE device in the Cisco MSX system.

    To extend the support to any other new device type, see the topic 'Provisioning a Device that is Not Supported Out-of-the-Box by Managed Device'.

  • Support for Meraki: Manage Meraki appliances and automate provisioning actions without the need for manual intervention. For more information, see Managing Meraki.