ThousandEyes and SD-WAN integration

[Eric_Liu]

• Introduction
• Prerequisites:
• Part I: Prepare the TE enterprise image
• Part II: Upload the TE enterprise image to the router
• Part III: Create the feature template
• Part IV: Attach the feature template to the Device template
• Part V: Attach the Device template to a Device
• Part VI: Verify configuration
• Part VII: Agent Management
• FAQ:
• What is the expected NTP behavior for a Catalyst 8000 series deployed Enterprise agent?
• Can the default external NTP source (pool.ntp.org) be changed to a customer's internal NTP source?
• How do I connect to the agent shell for Cisco agents?

Introduction 

This document describes how to install ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent on Cisco routers running in SD-WAN mode that are managed by vManage.

Prerequisites:

To review the supported Cisco routers and hardware requirements, see the Support Matrix.

Part I: Prepare the TE enterprise image

1. Log in to Thousandeyes account at Cisco Thousandeyes Page: https://app.thousandeyes.com
2. Navigate to Cloud & Enterprise Agents > Agent Settings, then click Add New Enterprise Agent.
3. Select the Cisco Application Hosting tab, then copy and save your account group token.
4. Input the network related information on that page, then click Download - TAR. A file will be downloaded to your local disk, named something like 'thousandeyes-enterprise-agent-4.4.3.cisco.tar'. 

Part II: Upload the TE enterprise image to the router

1. Log into the vManage Portal and Navigate to Maintenance > Software Repository
2. Click Virtual Image and select Upload Virtual Image > vManage
3. Upload the Thousandeyes installation image *.tar file from Part I, step 3 to vManage.
4. Once the image is uploaded, the filename should be present in the Virtual Image list.
5. To confirm the virtual image is ready, click Show Info to review and verify the virtual image's vnfProperties as below

Part III: Create the feature template

1. Navigate to Configuration > Templates.
2. 
3. Select Feature > Create Template > Add Template.
4. 

5. Under Select Device, search for the device model (for example, ISR4431) that you wish to deploy an agent to. See the Support Matrix for compatible routers.

6. Select ThousandEyes Agent template from under Other Templates.
7. Specify the template name and description:
8. 
9. Under Basic Configuration, enter the relevant Account Group Token. If you would like the agent traffic to follow the default management route, please select Default. However, SD-WAN mode offers the options (Global, Device Specific) to send agent traffic to pre-configured VPN tunnels, instead of following the default management route
10. 
11. Under Advanced, configure the Name Server, Hostname, and Web Proxy.
12. 
13. Important Note: This proxy configuration doesn't support any authentication methods. If you need to configure a proxy that requires basic or PAC authentication, you will need to use the CLI deployment option.
14. Click Save to save the template.

Part IV: Attach the feature template to the Device template

1. Navigate to Configuration > Template, from the device template, choose the template that you want to integrate with ThousandEyes. Then click the three dots icon and select Edit.
2. Navigate to Additional Templates, open the ThousandEyes Agent drop-down menu, and select the template created in Part III.
3. Click Update to save the changes.

Part V: Attach the Device template to a Device

1. Once updated, you will be returned to Configuration > Templates  and the templates list. Click the three dots icon and select Attach Devices.
2. 
3. Select the desired device(s) from the Available Devices list, then click Attach. The list will only contain vEdge devices that are the same model as the template.
4. 

Part VI: Verify configuration

Once the template is attached to the desired devices, you can verify it from the Running Configuration view.

1. Navigate to Configuration > Devices.
2. Click the three dots icon beside the desired device and select Running Configuration.
3. If it’s successful, you should be able to see the configuration information, like the following:
4. On the router side, you can run ‘show app-hosting list’ to verify as well.

5. Log into Thousandeyes portal, navigate to Cloud & Enterprise Agents > Agent Settings, the newly deployed Enterprise agent should show up in the Agent List.

Part VII: Agent Management

Agents can be un-deployed by removing the ThousandEyes Agent feature template from the device template. However, vManage cannot disable the running Agents once they are deployed. You will need to use either the web app or the CLI for agent management.

FAQ: 

What is the expected NTP behavior for a Catalyst 8000 series deployed Enterprise agent?

The enterprise agent on a Catalyst 8000 series switch uses the host system kernel clock. It also sends packets to pool.ntp.org to determine any clock offset. It does not try to adjust the host or container clock but will adjust measurement timestamps based on the clock offset.

Can the default external NTP source (pool.ntp.org) be changed to a customer's internal NTP source?

No. The agent uses pool.ntp.org to determine clock offset by default; this is currently not configurable.

How do I connect to the agent shell for Cisco agents?

To access the agent shell of a Cisco Enterprise Agent that is actively running, use the following command:

catalyst#app-hosting connect appid {application name} session

Once inside the agent shell, you can refer to the agent log for any further troubleshooting:

# tail /var/log/agent/te-agent.log