Telemetry data and Cisco ACI

[henryiron]

We would like to start some experimentation of telemetry data collection from our 93180-EX leaves. At last Cisco Live I found a lot of effort to promote this new technology, apparently it should be easy to subscribe and collect data in a custom application.

I searched but I was unable to find documentation on activating and exploiting these features, has anyone already tried?

Thanks,

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Hi @henryiron 

Streaming telemetry is configured on ACI through the monitoring policies. These gives you the ability to export periodically or after a trigger, faults, events and statistics for infra, fabric or tenant objects. You can find the monitoring policy from different sections:

1. For tenant monitoring: Tenant -> Policies ->Monitoring 
2. For fabric monitoring: Fabric -> Fabric Policies -> Policies -> Monitoring
3. For access monitoring: Fabric -> Access Policies -> Policies -> Monitoring

This documentation can guide you through the required configuration steps to enable monitoring.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/1-x/Operating_ACI/guide/b_Cisco_Operating_ACI/b_Cisco_Operating_ACI_chapter_01011.html 

Hope it helps,

Sergiu

[henryiron]

Buna Sergiu,

Thank you very much! This is the first hint I found on this specific topic. While in general there are a lot of examples about telemetry with "traditional" switches, I found a total lack of examples for the ACI side... Apparently the only solution is NIR, I was not able to find something more. Do you have other suggestions/hints/experience on this area?

Thank you very much,

best regards

[Sergiu.Daniluk · Accepted solution]

Salut :-)

Yes, thats pretty much the reason you do not find a lot of other examples about telemetry, other then Network Insights.

In the end this is the Cisco solution of telemetry collector and analyzer for ACI and DCNM. Without a doubt it is a great tool. You can install them directly on APIC, but if you want to leverage the full capabilities of both NIR and NIA, you should install them on an Application Services Engine.

There is a NI Base, which can be installed on APIC and gives you quite some help while working with TAC.

Documents about Network Insights: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/data-center-analytics/network-insights-data-center/tsd-products-support-series-home.html 

You can find the apps here: https://dcappcenter.cisco.com/ 

Cheers,

Sergiu

[omz]

This should get you started - 

https://developer.cisco.com/docs/ios-xe/#!streaming-telemetry-quick-start-guide/what-is-subscription

hope this helps 

please don't forget to rate any helpful posts. 

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Hi @omz 

The link you shared is for IOS-XE. The 'telemetry configuration part' does not really apply for ACI nor standalone Nexus switches. However, it makes reference to ELK stack which is a good telemetry collector platform.

Cheers,

Sergiu

[omz]

Hi @Sergiu.Daniluk 

thanks .. 

Yes its IOS-XE .. the idea was to share knowledge on telemetry and how subscription works in streaming telemetry.

the CiscoLive reference in the question was probably one of these sessions - 

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/emea/docs/2019/pdf/BRKDCN-2712.pdf

and its talks about ACI and NX-OS telemetry feature. I assume OP already seen a similar presentation and wanted to play with a custom application.

I could be wrong - but I thought .. info on understanding how streaming telemetry works would be helpful rather than giving a yes no answer. 

[omz]

Duplicate post?

https://blogs.cisco.com/developer/its-time-to-move-away-from-snmp-and-cli-and-use-model-driven-telemetry