Cisco Catalyst Center Template Training

[nsompura]

Hello. I am in the process of installing Catalyst Center in our environment. We want to create templates for Day0 onboarding, and DayN templates as well. I am new to creating templates, and wanted to see where I can learn more in depth scripting for either Jinja2 or Velocity. I have very basic knowledge of Python (I'm in the process of learning that as well). Where can I find more information about learning this? It was hoping it would have detailed explanations on the topics needed as I am new and wanted to learn as much as I can and use this opportunity to implement things properly in my environment.

[Preston Chilcote]

See this guide for Day0 onboarding:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/networking-knowledge-base/updating-management-ip-address-of-a-switch-during-the-pnp/ta-p/4820793

And look around in gitub for examples of day-N templates, such as:

https://developer.cisco.com/codeexchange/github/repo/kebaldwi/DNAC-TEMPLATES/

To get velocity templates to work, you really only need to understand basic if/else and for loops.  It's really just a scripting language, not a full blown programming language.  I think it's easier to learn than Jinja if you are starting from scratch.  Neither language is Cisco proprietary so there are lots of examples outside of cisco.com on how to use them.

[nsompura]

Thank you for the response!

I had a question regarding the templates and onboarding. When I am done attaching the templates and ready for onboarding, I have configured the Network Settings with various AAA, DNS and such servers. When I onboard a device, which settings will take affect? Will the templates take priority and be applied to the device or will the Network Settings take priority?

[Preston Chilcote]

You will have the option to see a config preview in the PnP workflow, so that should answer your questions once you give it a shot.