Ask Me Anything: Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance

[Brooke Hammer]

Ask Me Anything Event

Welcome to the Cisco Community Ask Me Anything conversation. Submit your questions from  Monday, September 23, 2024 through Friday, October 4, 2024. Our colleagues Arpita Dash, Prateek Upadhyay and Udhay R. will be waiting to assist you and resolve any questions that have not been clarified, or answer any new questions that you may have. We are waiting for you!

More about this event:

Join us for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event where you can dive deep into Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance!

What is it?

Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance is a component of Cisco's Catalyst Center (formerly DNA) that provides comprehensive network visibility, insights, and automated troubleshooting capabilities. It leverages advanced analytics and machine learning to help network administrators ensure optimal network performance and user experience

• Proactive Monitoring: Continuously monitors the network to detect and address issues before they impact users.

• Network Insights: Provides detailed insights into network performance, user experience, and application behavior.

• Automated Troubleshooting: Uses machine learning and AI to identify root causes of network issues and suggest remediation steps.

• Health Scores: Offers health scores for network devices, clients, and applications to quickly assess the overall network health.

• User and Device Tracking: Tracks user and device activity to help identify and resolve connectivity issues.

• Historical Data Analysis: Analyses historical data to identify trends and recurring issues, aiding in long-term network planning and optimization.

By utilizing Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance, organizations can enhance their network reliability, improve user satisfaction, and reduce the time and effort required for network troubleshooting and maintenance.

Official Resources:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center-assurance/2-3-5/b_cisco_dna_assurance_2_3_5_ug.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center-rogue-management-application/2-3-5/quick-start-guide/b_rogue_management_qsg_2_3_5.html

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/apjc/docs/2023/pdf/BRKEMT-2397.pdf

Join us for this insightful Ask Me Anything session and gain valuable insights into the world of Cisco Catalyst Center Assurance. Let's uncover the solutions to your challenges and explore the vast possibilities in this dynamic field.

Our experts

Arpita Dash Technical Consulting Engineer

Prateek Upadhyay Technical Consulting Engineer

Udhay R. Technical Consulting Engineer

For more information, visit the Cisco Catalyst Center discussion forums . If you have questions or are experiencing technical problems with any of the Cisco products, post your question, request information or use the Cisco Community before opening a case with the TAC.

[prateupa]

If the health score of your device is blank, you can check the below things.

The device should be reachable, managed, and supported in DNAC's inventory.

Device should be assigned to a site in inventory.

Verify if the device and the version are compatible for Assurance: Compatability Matrix

Verify the License in the network device.

Verfiy that DNAC-CA trustpoint is present in device(show crypto pki trustpoints). If it is not present, you can force push telemetry configuration from DNAC to device. This will push DNAC-CA certificate to device.

• Update Telemetry Settings for PoE Telemetry

NTP must be sync between Cisco DNA Center and network device.

Make sure that required ports like 161, 162, 25103 etc are opened between device and DNAC. 

• Required Network Ports

For 9800 WLC, netconf is needed for managing device through DNAC and get assurance data. Make sure port 830 is open and it is also configured in DNAC's inventory.  Verify that sdn-network-infra-iwan certificate is present in device. This can also be pushed to device using force telemetry config push.

For DNAC-CA and sdn-network-infra-iwan certificate, verify that revocation check is working fine. Run "show logging" in device to see if device is reporting CRL reachability issue. To fix this, make sure that CRL is reachable from device or you can set "revocation-check none" to bypass the check.

[msdin8]

How to enable AI RRM in DNAC and what is the advantages of this?

[arpdash]

Enabling AI Radio Resource Management (RRM) in Cisco DNA Center (now often referred to as Cisco Catalyst Center) helps optimize wireless network performance by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to manage radio frequencies dynamically.AI Radio Resource Management (RRM) in Cisco DNA Center (Cisco Catalyst Center) leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize wireless network performance dynamically. Here are some key advantages of AI RRM:

Enhanced Network Performance
Improved User Experience
Proactive Issue Resolution
Simplified Network Management
Scalability
Enhanced Security

You can enable Cisco AI-Enhanced RRM in System > Settings >Cisco AI Analytics >Enable AI-Enhanced RRM.

You can refer below link for Cisco Catalyst Center AI-Enhanced RRM Deployment Guide.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/technical-reference/ai-enhanced-rrm-dg.html

[Juan Olivares]

Hi Team, we are delivering Catalyst Center AIOps training with our customer, but we have seen that AI Network Analytics page takes time loading data i.e Network Heatmap.
 
This is a big Campus Network with approx. 17K Access Points, so delay is expected.

Here our questions and looking for guidance: 
1. What is the “standard” Assurance > AI Network Analytics loading time for big Campus Network (+17K Access Points)?
2. Who can guide us using Pendo.io and Catalyst Center integration? We want to explore Analytics/UX Research to measures AI Network Analytics loading time.

Thanks!

[arpdash]

There is no standard time for loading AI network analystics. Trends and Insights might take sometime to load however Network Heatmap and Baselines are expected to load sooner.

Currently there is no option to integrate pendo directly with CatC by customers. You can reach out to accounts team .

[shivanshpanigrahi06]

How can I get application health for my switches and wlc in dnac? Is there any pre-requisite for this?

[prateupa]

To get application health on DNAC for devices managed by DNAC, the pre-requisites would be below:

The device should be reachable, managed, supported and assigned to site in inventory.

There are other factors also which need to be considered. Below guide would help you out in setting up devices for assurance.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center-assurance/2-3-5/b_cisco_dna_assurance_2_3_5_ug/b_cisco_dna_assurance_2_3_3_ug_chapter_011.html

[pkamal]

We do not see the port utilization stats for port-channel interfaces on DNAC device-360 page. Could you please clarify about this.

[arpdash]

DNAC collects stats only for physical interfaces. So you could check for the utilization statistics for individual physical interface.

[SaurabhKhillare]

Hello,

on 2.3.5.5 CatC, I have Application telemetry enabled on 9300 edge switches. Under Assurance for DNS transactions, I am seeing 100% failures for couple of servers GUI. However, these servers are not my DNS servers, these are my fabric VN gateways IPs. 

May i know how these DNS server transactions are learnt by DNAC? 

Thanks

[udr]

Catalyst Center uses Netflow and application telemetry to record DNS server transactions.

There is a recent observation on fabric set-up where we see 100% failures for some servers which are not actually DNS server. We are working on this behavior internally. I'd request you to open a TAC case to track this issue.

[Gopinath V]

Hello,

How can we configure automated backups on a scheduled basis of onboarded network devices as putty file

can we save them locally on catalyst center and download to local desktop where we dont have backup servers configured

[arpdash]

DNA Center always has the latest device configuration in its internal databases Also Cisco DNA Center performs periodic backup of your device running configuration. You can choose the day and time for the backup and the total number of config drifts that can be saved per device.

choose System > Settings > Configuration Archive for schedule same.

You can configure an external SFTP server for archiving the running configuration of devices.

Also Another way to access the clear text device configurations is via APIs. The API available in Cisco DNA Center allows to retrieve raw startup, running configs, and VLAN DB in the form of a zip file in a similar way as the configuration archive capability.

API details:

POST /network-device-archive/cleartext

ref:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center/2-3-5/admin_guide/b_cisco_dna_center_admin_guide_2_3_5/b_cisco_dna_center_admin_guide_2_3_5_chapter_010.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/cloud-systems-management/dna-center/220644-configure-and-troubleshoot-external-conf.html

https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/cisco-dna-center-and-device-configuration-management

[SaurabhKhillare]

Hello,

I have fabric enabled site with edges and borders added to it, however Health for fabric is intermittently showing. Also for fabric devices as well i dont see health for all devices. Is there any requirement for the health to show up for fabric site and devices?

Thanks

[arpdash]

For fabric intermittant issue , there could be differnt possible reasons . For basic you can check the device connectivity and health score , time sync , fabric site connectivity etc.
In case of still facing issue please reach out to TAC.

SD-Access Assurance capability requires the Fabric devices to be configured for NETCONF, discovered with NETCONF, and to have Cisco DNA Center telemetry enabled. To monitor and troubleshoot fabric sites, you must first configure the fabric site.

Please refer below guide for the pre-requisite:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cloud-systems-management/network-automation-and-management/dna-center-assurance/2-3-5/b_cisco_dna_assurance_2_3_5_ug/m_monitor-and-troubleshoot-sd-access-fabric-networks.html