Overview

Introduction to Cisco Enterprise Service Automation

Cisco Enterprise Service Automation is an orchestration and management application that allows enterprise IT operation teams to design, provision, and manage virtual and physical branch networks. ESA orchestrates the components required for branch provisioning by integrating with APIC EM and manages the nodes provisioned via Prime Infrastructure. IT operators can choose a predefined service catalog from the ESA user interface and map it to a physical network location where services are to be deployed.

ESA is not a standalone application. It operates collaboratively with Cisco Prime Infrastructure and APIC-EM to provision and deploy the configuration and services on the enterprise network infrastructure.

ESA manages the full life cycle of virtual network services by providing the following:

  • Design

    • Standardization of site design through the creation of templates for the branch and campus

    • Policy definition based on business priorities

    • Custom or prescriptive designs

  • Provisioning

    • Zero-touch deployment model

    • Automated orchestration of virtual and physical network services

    • Service chaining

  • Management

    • Health monitoring of platform and network services

    • Dynamic scaling of services

    • Service deployment

  • Virtual Network Functions(VNFs)

    VNFs are the network services needed to run a network. Cisco Enterprise Network Function Virtualization (NFV) includes the following services:

    • Routing (ISRv)

    • Firewall (ASAv and NGFW)

    • Application acceleration (vWAAS)

    • Third Party VNFs (Windows, Linux)

Enterprise Service Automation Organization

The Enterprise Service Automation web interface is organized into a lifecycle workflow that includes the high-level task areas described in Table 1. This document follows the same general organization.

Table 1 Enterprise Service Automation Task Areas

Task Area

Description

Users

Devices

Add and view devices— allows you to add or upload devices to ESA that are yet to be provisioned on the branches. You can map the serial numbers to the profiles for uniquely identifying the devices before provisioning.

Administrator, Profile Manager

Branches

Add and view branches—allows you to add and provision the branches and provides a map and table view of branch information.

Administrator, Profile Manager, Approver

Profiles

Add and view profiles—allows you to create and provision reusable design templates for network branches, use predefined or matching templates and view the branch profile status.

Administrator, Profile Manager, Approver

Configuration

Perform all management operations such as adding Data Center profiles, assigning IP addresses, managing groups, configuring system setup, adding users and roles, system backup, managing certificates, managing Network Knowledge Pack (NKP), synchronizing external or internal changes.

Administrator

Deployments

Allows you to view the deployment status, offline deployments and diagnose errors.

Administrator, Profile Manager

Information

Provides information about audit logs, system health, system logs, system metrics and notifications, and track the user.

Administrator