Want to learn about the new hot Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA)?  DevNet has released a new learning track called DevNet Express for DNA which is freely available, as are all DevNet tracks, for you to learn more.  This learning track contains ten modules that are composed of thirty-two labs for your learning pleasure. As always you work at your own pace, and there is sample code with exercises for you to do hands-on learning.  You’ll learn about DNA, then dive into its components learning about their concepts, APIs and as always you’ll have the opportunity to write and run code.  Most of the currently available modules are listed below. We recommend that you work through these modules in the order given, especially the first four, as they cover the fundamentals of setting up your system, DNA concepts as well as REST and coding fundamentals.  As with all of the over one hundred DevNet labs, there is nothing to purchase to start and complete the labs.  All that you need is a Cisco CCO ID which can be freely obtained by going to http://www.cisco.com and clicking on the Register link. Once you have your CCO ID, you can get started at the DevNet DNA Learning Track. Have questions? Need technical help?  Contact us now at https://developer.cisco.com/site/devnet/support/ Come and learn more at DevNet! ... View more

Visit our redesigned APIC-EM portal which has greatly simplified accessing learning materials for APIs and coding! Starting on page one you’ll have easy access to learning labs as well as sample code. We have over a dozen free learning labs, most with sample code, that will teach you how to write code and use the APIC-EM APIs.  In addition you’ll find links as shown below to our DevNet repositories that contain sample code and scripts to get you started. On this same page we’ll point you to the latest blogs, community forum questions and answers for APIC-EM, and provide links to the sandbox where you can try out the technology at no cost! In our documents page we’ve added a navigation bar to make finding the documentation you need much easier.  There are even video tutorials covering various APIC-EM technologies. Come and learn more at DevNet! ... View more

Want to learn about the new hot Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA)?  DevNet has released a new learning track called DevNet Express for DNA which is freely available, as are all DevNet tracks, for you to learn more.  This learning track contains ten modules that are composed of thirty-two labs for your learning pleasure. As always you work at your own pace, and there is sample code with exercises for you to do hands-on learning.  You’ll learn about DNA, then dive into its components learning about their concepts, APIs and as always you’ll have the opportunity to write and run code.  Most of the currently available modules are listed below. We recommend that you work through these modules in the order given, especially the first four, as they cover the fundamentals of setting up your system, DNA concepts as well as REST and coding fundamentals.  As with all of the over one hundred DevNet labs, there is nothing to purchase to start and complete the labs.  All that you need is a Cisco CCO ID which can be freely obtained by going to http://www.cisco.com and clicking on the Register link. Once you have your CCO ID, you can get started at the DevNet DNA Learning Track. Have questions? Need technical help?  Contact us now at https://developer.cisco.com/site/devnet/support/ Come and learn more at DevNet! ... View more

Visit our redesigned APIC-EM portal which has greatly simplified accessing learning materials for APIs and coding! Starting on page one you’ll have easy access to learning labs as well as sample code. We have over a dozen free learning labs, most with sample code, that will teach you how to write code and use the APIC-EM APIs.  In addition you’ll find links as shown below to our DevNet repositories that contain sample code and scripts to get you started. On this same page we’ll point you to the latest blogs, community forum questions and answers for APIC-EM, and provide links to the sandbox where you can try out the technology at no cost! In our documents page we’ve added a navigation bar to make finding the documentation you need much easier.  There are even video tutorials covering various APIC-EM technologies. Come and learn more at DevNet! ... View more

Written by Michael Earls If you're like me Christmas and New Year's went super fast and around this time Cisco announced the new software release of ACI 1.2. For others this was like an early Christmas present including support for a more advanced NX-OS style CLI, redesigned GUI, and Increased scalability. Check out the latest update here. Below I will show just a few examples on using the new style CLI to create VLANs, and new Tenants. Accessing the CLI: Access the secure shell (SSH) client, open an SSH connection to the out-of-band management IP address that was configured durning the initial setup. $ ssh apic-admin@10.10.10.10 Application Policy Infrastructure Controller apic-admin@10.10.10.10's password: The NS-OS style CLI is organized the same way using a hierarchy of commands starting with EXEC mode as the root tree. The CLI supports question mark (?) level help at the system prompt. Difference in usage when using NX-OS Global configuration mode is entered when the configure command instead of configureterminal To configure node-level or Leaf-level configuration, you must navigate to that given switch using leaf command The physical port is slightly different, Ethernet port eth x/y instead of ethX/Y Special characters such as ‘$’ or ‘!’ should be escaped with a backslash (‘\$’) or wrap the word or string in single quotes Below we are creating VLAN groups called VLAN Domains, this is a combination of single or multiple VLANS. The VLAN-DOMAIN supports dynamic and static VLANs. The default type is static unless otherwise defined. apic# configure apic(config)# vlan-domain domain1 apic(config-vlan)# vlan 1001-1999,4001 apic(config-vlan)# exit apic(config)# vlan-domain domain2 dynamic apic(config-vlan)# vlan 201-300 apic(config-vlan)# vlan 401-500 dynamic Now, lets associate those new VLAN-Domains we created in the last step and associate them to a leaf node interface. apic# configure (config) # leaf 101-102 (config-leaf) # int eth 1/1-24 (config-leaf-if) # vlan-domain member domain1 (config-leaf) # int eth 1/1-12 (config-leaf-if) # no switchport (config-leaf) # int eth 1/13-24 (config-leaf-if) # switchport (config) # leaf 101-102 (config-leaf) # int eth 1/1-12 (config-leaf-if) # switchport vlan scope local (config-leaf) # int eth 1/13 (config-leaf-if) # no switchport vlan scope local We can also create new tenants or modify the existing tenants defined within APIC. apic# configure apic(config)# tenant CorpMarketing apic(config-tenant)# security domain CorpMarketing_domain1 apic(config-tenant)# vrf context CorpMarketing_v1 apic(config-tenant-vrf)# contract enforce apic(config-tenant-vrf)# contract provider web apic(config-tenant-vrf)# contract consumer db apic(config-tenant-vrf)# contract provider icmp apic(config-tenant-vrf)# contract consumer icmp apic(config-tenant-vrf)# exit apic(config-tenant)# bridge-domain CorpMarketing_b1 apic(config-tenant-bd)# vrf member CorpMarketing_v1 apic(config-tenant-bd)# exit apic(config-tenant)# interface bridge-domain CorpMarketing_b1 apic(config-tenant-interface)# ip address 172.1.1.1/24 apic(config-tenant-interface)# exit Just like NS-OS to remove the current configuration set we issue a 'no' in front of the command. apic# configure apic(config)# no tenant CorpMarketing apic# end apic(config)# no vlan-domain domain1 apic# exit In our next post we will look at using show commands as well the builtin diagnostic CLI commands. ... View more

Written by Emmeline Wong Following is a list of some of the most sophisticated experts in the industry. Please bookmark or follow these blogs to gain insights about the latest innovations in the industry: Craig Huitema - Director, Data Center Marketing Praveen Jain - VP, Engineering Mike Cohen - Principal Engineer, Data Center and Cloud Shashi Kiran - Data Center, Cloud and Open Networking Harry Petty - Director, Data Center and Cloud Marketing Sandeep Agrawal - Sr. Marketing Manager, Cloud Solutions Ravi Balakrishnan - Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Datacenter Solutions Rami Rammaha - Marketing Manager, providing highly useful tool, the Cisco ACI Business Value Calculator ... View more

Written by Emmeline Wong This chapter includes the following sections: Prerequisites About Chef Chef Client NX-OS Environment cisco-cookbook Prerequisites The following are prerequisites for Chef: You must have a Cisco device and operating system software release that supports the installation: Cisco Nexus 9500 Series switch Cisco Nexus 9300 Series switch Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switch Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switch Cisco NX-OS Release 7.0(3)I2(1) or higher You must have the required disk storage available on the device for Chef deployment: A minimum of 400 MB free disk space on bootflash You need a Chef server with Chef 12.4.1 or higher. You need Chef Client 12.4.1 or higher. About Chef Chef is an open-source software package developed by Chef Software, Inc. It is a systems and cloud infrastructure automation framework that deploys servers and applications to any physical, virtual, or cloud location, no matter the size of the infrastructure. Each organization is comprised of one or more workstations, a single server, and every node that will be configured and maintained by the chef-client. Cookbooks and recipes are used to tell the chef-client how each node should be configured. The chef-client, which is installed on every node, does the actual configuration. A Chef cookbook is the fundamental unit of configuration and policy distribution. A cookbook defines a scenario and contains everything that is required to support that scenario, including libraries, recipes, files, and more. A Chef recipe is a collection of property definitions for setting state on the device. The details for checking and setting these property states are abstracted away so that a recipe may be used for more than one operating system or platform. While recipes are commonly used for defining configuration settings, they can also be used to install software packages, copy files, start services, and more. The following references provide more information from Chef: Topic Link Chef home https://www.chef.io Chef overview https://docs.chef.io/chef_overview.html Chef documentation (all) https://docs.chef.io/ Chef Client NX-OS Environment The chef-client software must be installed on Cisco Nexus platforms. Customers can install chef-client in one of the Linux environments provided by the Cisco Nexus platform: Bash Shell—This is the native WindRiver Linux environment underlying Cisco NX-OS. Guest Shell—This is a secure Linux container environment running CentOS. Its advantage is a secure, open execution environment that is decoupled from the host. The workflow for both use cases is similar. The following documents provide step-by-step guidance on agent software download, installation, and setup: Topic Link Chef Client (Native) Latest information on Client RPM is available here. Chef Client (Guest Shell, CentOs7) Latest information on Client RPM is available here. Chef Client: Installation and setup on Cisco Nexus platform (manual setup) cisco-cookbook::README-install-agent.md Chef Client: Installation and setup on Cisco Nexus platform (automated installation using the Chef provisioner) cisco-cookbook::README-chef-provisioning.md cisco-cookbook cisco-cookbook is a Cisco-developed open-source interface between the abstract resources configuration in a Chef recipe and the specific implementation details of the Cisco Nexus operating system and platforms. This cookbook is installed on the Chef Server and is required for proper Chef Client operation on Cisco Nexus devices. cisco-cookbook can be found on Chef Supermarket. The following documents provide additional detail for cisco-cookbook and generic cookbook installation procedures: Topic Link cisco-cookbook location https://supermarket.chef.io/cookbooks/cisco-cookbook Resource Type Catalog https://github.com/cisco/cisco-network-chef-cookbook#resource-by-tech cisco-cookbook: Source Code Repository https://github.com/cisco/cisco-network-chef-cookbook cisco-cookbook: Setup and usage cisco-cookbook::README.md Chef Supermarket https://supermarket.chef.io Other resources: The complete book: Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS Programmability Guide, Release 7.x (2015) ... View more

If you live in North Carolina and dabble in technology, you might have attended Cisco Live Local Edition which just recently took place in both Charlotte and Raleigh.  There were many participating vendors showing off their latest networking, collaboration and other various technologies. Kamlesh Shah who is a Cisco Consulting Systems Engineer and myself Brett Tiller, a Developer Evangelist for Cisco DevNet, were there presenting a few of the components of Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA). We presented two courses: Coding-101 and Coding-201.  Each course spanned 2 ½ hours and included hands-on labs to give users the chance to learn some basics about the technologies discussed within each.  The technologies discussed in Coding-101 are also covered in the Cisco DevNet Learning Labs under labs: Coding 101 and Coding 102.  For the course Coding-201 the corresponding labs are:  APIC-EM APIs with Python, CMX 10 Mobility Services REST, and Git 100: Basics of the git version control system . Coding-101 covered the web service Representational State Transfer (REST), the Cisco product Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) and JavaScript Open Notation (JSON).  APIC-EM is a controller based component of DNA and provides REST APIs allowing engineers to automate management of the network.  JSON formatted data is passed and received.  Focusing more on REST and APIC-EM, communication to the server was demonstrated via Postman which is a web based client.  This client allowed users to understand web based communication along with APIC-EM without having to learn how to write code.  The course was completed with users running Python scripts to see how the same tasks could be achieved programmatically. Coding-201 built on top of the Coding-101 course and focused upon teaching users how to write basic Python code in order to learn how to parse JSON data.  Connected Mobile Experience (CMX) which is a cloud based component of DNA and provides REST based APIs to track the location of network devices was introduced. Python syntax, datatypes, looping and functions were introduced and JSON formatting along with steps required to access the data was discussed.  In the labs users wrote python code to parse various forms of JSON data. Overall the classes were well attended and participants were excited to learn how to write code and get their hands on Cisco Technology. ... View more

Recently I gave an online presentation discussing Cisco DevNet, the DevNet Zone which will be at Cisco Live Las Vegas, and the APIC-EM Controller along with the technologies required to use it. As you may know in 2016, Cisco Live Las Vegas runs from July 10 – 14.  If you plan to arrive one day early you might be highly interested in attending the DevNet Springboard Event which is a free two day event providing training on Network Programmability including various Cisco technologies such as APIC-EM, VIRL, DNA and much more.  There’s also a two day hackathon using collaboration technologies such as Spark, Tropo and several others; prizes will be awarded to winners. At Cisco Live, the DevNet Zone will be there as always for participants to come to play and learn about Cisco technologies.  There will be over 80 free learning labs readily available with Cisco staff ready to answer questions, demonstration booths, technology and panel sessions, and even Engineer Death Matches.  At the end of each day starting around 5 pm there will be a happy hour featuring dueling pianos, and where there’s technology there must be free beer which will be provided by DevNet during happy hour. There are several learning labs that cover APIC-EM and I presented a crash course that covered the Coding 101 and Coding 102 labs.  In this presentation I discussed the web service Representational State Transfer (REST), the Cisco product Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) and JavaScript Open Notation (JSON).  APIC-EM is a controller based component of the Digital Network Architecture (DNA) and provides REST APIs allowing engineers to automate management of the network.  JSON formatted data is passed and received.  I used Postman which is a web based client to show how REST calls interface with the APIC-EM controller.  I then ran various Python scripts that are provided in the Coding-102 lab and explained the source code function and use. There was well over one hundred attendees and many signed up for the DevNet Springboard Event afterwards.  At this moment, there’s still room, but it’s filling up fast.  Come see us at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live, have fun and learn something new. ... View more