Cisco SD-WAN Deployment

[RS19]

I am looking for cloud based SD-WAN deployment options.

I have the below questions:

1. Who is responsible for the deployment of vManage, vBond & vSmart if I go for cloud based deployment model.

  - Will it be Cisco who will be deploying it or will it the customer responsibility.

[maxnpj]

Who is responsible for the deployment of vManage, vBond & vSmart if I go for cloud based deployment model.

For a cloud-based deployment Cisco will deploy and build the controllers (vManage / vSmart / vBond), they will also update the underlying operating system software and they will be responsible for moving the controllers to another platform if necessary.

*You* will be responsible for updating the vManage / vSmart / vBond controllers using the SDWAN software (e.g. Viptela o/s 19.2.31).

[svemulap@cisco.com]

Customer will be responsible for getting controllers deployed for OnPrem.
They can certainly open a proactive TAC case for any help that they may need.

[sdipippo]

Hi RS19,

There are multiple ways to deploy controllers in the cloud:

1) Cisco-hosted (recommended, most customers do this)

2) Partner-hosted (usually done in the case where a Cisco partner will manage your SD-WAN enviornment).

The other way is "on-premise" which could actually mean that you deploy them in your own data centers or in your own cloud account.

I think your question is referring to "Cisco-hosted", so I'll answer accordingly. When you choose a Cisco-hosted controller deployment option, the infrastructure of the controllers is managed by the Cisco Cloud Ops team. This team makes sure that:

- Your controllers are up, online, and reachable

- Your public IP addresses of your company are allowed to access them (You provide these IP addresses)

- There is redundancy in place. For example, in U.S., we deploy them on East and West coast cloud centers.

Cisco will perform the initial install of the controllers for you and provide you with the required information to access them. To get in touch with CloudOps at any point, you can open a TAC case using technology > SD-WAN and then you'll see a choice for Cloud Ops. With the Cisco-hosted model, you are responsible for actually configuring, upgrading, and using the controllers as you would in an on-prem install. What it means is that you are still the one creating device templates, policies, logging into vManage to do something, etc. The CloudOps team is just making sure you can reach the controllers and that they are healthy.

Something to note if you are picking a deployment model: Remember that if Cisco deploys controllers for you, they will live in a cloud account that is not yours. So they won't be able to reach your AAA servers and logging into the controllers will be a matter of local credentials by default, because controllers don't participate in the data plane by themselves. However, there are ways to deploy vEdge cloud (virtual) routers in the instance with your controllers so that they can join the SD-WAN fabric and communicate with your data center AAA servers. The other option is to use SAML to authenticate with an identity provider. These requirements should be determined prior to the creation of your controller set by Cisco. Please communicate these requirements to the account (sales) and/or services team.

Hope it helps!

Steve