Application Experience aims to provide visibility and insights into the performance of applications. It enables a network administrator to quickly analyze the health of applications present in the network and isolate network issues from application issues, enhancing the end-user’s application experience.
Cisco DNA Center offers application visibility, which gives us a clear look at exactly what applications are passing through the network. AVC-based NetFlow is deployed on the network devices, which uses NBAR2 to identify the applications end-to-end consistently. The NetFlow deployed collects IP traffic information by examining the flow of data entering and exiting the network devices interface.
Based on the telemetry collected using NetFlow, Cisco DNA Center calculates the health score for applications and calculates various stats of every application, such as:
Quantitative Metrics: Usage and Throughput
Qualitative Metrics: Delay, Jitter, and Packet loss
Additionally, we also get an insight on the dashboard, which shows if the delay/jitter/packet loss is happening on the client, server, or application.
This data can be viewed from a device perspective (Device 360 window), from the user perspective (Client 360 window), or from the application perspective (Application 360 window). If you are looking to enable Application Experience in your Catalyst Center, below are the steps.
Steps to Enable Application Experience:
- Install the below Packages in Cisco DNA Center:
- Application Visibility Service
Go to Systems > Software Management > Select “Application Visibility Service” Package > Install
- Application Registry
Go to Systems > Software Management > Select “Application Registry” Package > Install
Please move to next step if these packages are already enabled on your Cisco DNA Center.
- Select Cisco DNA Center as NetFlow collector:
Go to Design > Network Settings > Telemetry > Application Visibility > Choose “Use Cisco DNA Center as the Netflow Collector” > Save
- Enable Application Telemetry for Devices in Inventory:
Go to Provision > Inventory > Select the Device > Actions > Telemetry > Enable Application Telemetry
- Enable CBAR on devices:
Go to Provision > Application Visibility > select the device > Enable CBAR
- Enable NBAR Cloud:
- The first step is to register your Cisco DNA Center to Cisco DNA Cloud App:
Go to https://dna.cisco.com/ > create a new account or Login with CCO > from Main Menu Navigate to Applications and Products > Products > Select the Region > Register. Add required information and register the product.
Once you click on Register, an OTP generated will be generated.
Then go to > DNA Center UI > Systems > Settings > Cloud Authentication > Add OTP > paste the OTP from Cisco DNA Cloud
ii. Enable NBAR Cloud
Go to Provision > Application Visibility > Discovered Application > Click on “Configure” under NBAR Cloud.
From here, Click on Configure > add Client ID*, Client Secret, Organization name > Save
To get the Client ID and Client Secret, click on the hyperlink “Cisco API Console” from the Configure NBAR Cloud sidebar.
*KEY is the Client ID here
A note about product naming:
Cisco DNA Center is in the process of being rebranded as Catalyst Center. Users of 2.3.7 will see the Cisco DNA Center name in the product. However, as we continue the rebranding process, customers will see both names used in different collaterals but both names refer to the same product.
