Cisco OnePK vs ACPI-EM or other

[fabrice75]

Hi guys,

I am a bit confused on where to start for programmatically getting information from devices on the network. I have a web application written in python that holds my network inventory where devices are entered manually. It’s all working fine at the moment but I am looking at adding some “cleverness” to it. It is really simple all I want to do is enter a device IP and get the app to discover it i.e. I don’t need to do any changes on those devices just pull information from them.

I was looking into Python/OnePK to do that but it seem that Cisco OnePK is being left aside (at least for now) https://communities.cisco.com/thread/51582 . Now looking at APIC-EM if I understand correctly it comes with its own web frontend as seen in https://sandboxapic.cisco.com/ it doesn’t really help me as I want to keep my own web frontend that I have created in Python. Cisco Open SDN controller is not an option for me because it is a commercial product and it is also overkill for what I want to do.

Can someone please give some direction on how I can achieve what I want? To me Cisco OnePK was the best solution but I am reluctant to use something that is no longer maintained or looked after.

Any suggestion?

[brtiller · Accepted solution]

Hi Fabrice,

You can achieve that functionality via the APIC EM discovery and hosts REST calls which are described in the API Reference Guide at Cisco DevNet: APIC Enterprise Module (EM) - API Reference Guide .  There are also APIC EM learning labs at http://learninglabs.cisco.com that you can try out to learn more about available functionality.

Thanks,

Brett

[fabrice75]

Thanks Brett,

If I get correctly I can acheive this using APIC EM SDN controller but

1) The product is not available yet for general public?

2) When it will come out it will only be supported on Cisco UCS (not possible to install it on Ubuntu Server)?

Thanks,

Fabrice

[brtiller]

Hi Fabrice,

The product will be available for General Audience around the end of October, so very soon.  We will be updating the APIC EM portal on DevNet with the latest information soon.

As I understand it can be installed onto a Ubuntu Server, but I don't have all the details as of yet.

Thanks,

Brett

[Vaclav Oujezsky]

Hi guys,

I also try to use the onePK feature to copy packets (flow) to my app from cisco devices. What would be new good solution regard to this discussion that onePK is being left aside? Will be onePK maintained on Cisco devices in the future?

Thanks a lot,

Vaclav

[fabrice75]

According to the APIC-EM overview in the southband section;

The use of the CLI ensures that APIC EM works with your existing Cisco legacy products. Future versions of APIC EM will leverage other southbound technology such as onePK, OpenFlow, and other device APIs as they are implemented.

So to me it look like that APIC-EM will make use of onePK so I assume it would still be supported on the devices for a while.

Fabrice