Can we perform ping , traceroute , telnet from APIC GUI ?

[Network_Sarovani]

Hi Experts , 

Can we perform ping , traceroute , telnet from APIC GUI ?

What all actions cannot be done via APIC GUI ? but required CLI access to do so ?

[RedNectar]

Hi @Network_Sarovani ,

Can we perform ping , traceroute , telnet from APIC GUI ?

Check the Operations tab - you may find what you want there.

BUT

1. you have to create a session
2. you can only ping/traceroute between discovered endpoints

Telnet is out of the question, but if enabled, you can right-click on a switch and select ssh

 

BUT - like I said, this needs to be enabled - the pop tells you how

And - in fact what it does do is initiate an ssh session tot he APIC, whre you can then ssh to the leaf/spine

Which brings us to your second question

What all actions cannot be done via APIC GUI ? but required CLI access to do so ?

All of the above can be possible more easily done from the CLI

You can perform ping and traceroute - and again telnet is completely out of the question on the APIC, it's not enabled on the APIC

apic1# ping -h
Usage: ping [-aAbBdDfhLnOqrRUvV64] [-c count] [-i interval] [-I interface]
<snip>

To access traceroute, you need to go to bash first

apic1# bash
admin@apic1:~> traceroute 172.16.12.1
traceroute to 172.16.12.1 (172.16.12.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 1.1.0.1 (1.1.0.1) 0.159 ms !X 0.127 ms !X 0.136 ms !X
admin@apic1:~>

Although telnet is out of the question, ssh works fine, and is typically used to access leaf switches, like this

apic1# ssh leaf2201
Housley Fabric#2 ACI Lab
Password:
Last login: Wed Feb 16 15:52:33 2022 from 10.2.0.1

And once you have access to a leaf switch, you will find one of the most useful of all CLI commands, iping 

Leaf2201# iping -h

usage: iping     [ -d 	 set the SO_DEBUG option]
		 [ -D 	 enable debug information ]
		 [ -F 	 enable do not fragment bit in IP header ]
		 [ -L 	 receive packets on supplied interface ]
		 [ -n 	 enable printing host IP address than resolved name ]
		 [ -q 	 quiet output ]
		 [ -r 	 disable routing of the packets, send only to directly connected hosts ]
		 [ -v 	 output in verbose format ]
		 [ -V 	  	 name of the VRF through which destination is reachable ]
		 [ -c 	  	 no of packets to send ]
		 [ -i 	  		 no of seconds to wait before sending next packet ]
		 [ -p 	  	 packet payload pattern ]
		 [ -s 	  	 size of packets to send ]
		 [ -t 	  	 wait for seconds to receive reply ]
		 [ -S 	  	 send packet with given source-ip or IP of given interface and
		      	                       	 send packet out of that interface ]
		 	 destination host-name or ip address

Most commonly you will need to specify the VRF so you can test connectivity to an endpoint.

There is also itraceroute with similar options to iping - but not documented as well - however you can find reference to it here