Catalyst Center Onboarding - Ask Me Anything

[Brooke Hammer]

Welcome to the Cisco Community Ask Me Anything conversation. Submit your questions from  Friday, January 17, 2025 through Friday, February 7, 2025. Our colleagues Alex Guckin, Bryan Fenlason, Jason Wiatr, Zuhair Bedwan, Daniel Angelini and Jignesh Shah will be waiting to assist you and resolve any questions that have not been clarified, or answer any new questions that you may have.

Need a little help getting started with Catalyst Center?

Whether you are preparing for your onboarding journey, ready to install your physical appliance, or deploying a virtual appliance, our Specialists are ready to help. In this Ask Me Anything hosted by our NX Customer Success Specialist team, our Specialists are ready to answer any questions you may have about the first phase of your Catalyst Center deployment.

The live discussion board will be open from January 17th-February 7th. During this time, you will have the opportunity to:

• Ask onboarding specific questions and get direct answers from Cisco Specialists
• Bookmark self-serve resources such as the Catalyst Center Resource Repository
• Gain insights about features and capabilities of Catalyst Center
• Network with other Catalyst Center users including Cisco Specialists, partners, and peers

How to participate:

• Visit the Community Catalyst Center AMA discussion forum
• Log in with your CCO ID
• Start commenting with your Catalyst Center onboarding questions

Note: Please post your post as a comment below no later than February 6, 2025.

Post your question below by clicking "Reply"

(Answers will be processed depending on the availability of the experts)
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Our experts - CX Customer Success Specialists

Alex Guckin

Bryan Fenlason

Jason Wiatr

Zuhair Bedwan

Daniel Angelini

Jignesh Shah

[Jignesh Shah]

Hello Ramu-Raja,

The C9300/C9500 smart licenses include both perpetual (Network Advantage) and subscription (DNA Advantage) licenses.
- If your DNA Advantage subscription expires, you will still be able to manage your switches using the Network Advantage perpetual license.
- However, you will lose access to the features and capabilities provided by the DNA Advantage subscription such as:
   - Advanced analytics
   - Automation
   - Security features

See the link to the Cisco Catalyst and Cisco DNA Software Subscription Matrix for Switching:
https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/products/software/dna-subscription-switching/en-sw-sub-matrix-switching.html

- Jignesh S.

[nsompura]

Hello. I am having issues with provisioning a Catalyst 9300 switch and a 8200 router onto Catalyst Center. I have added the device to a site, enabled netconf and is working, but when I go to provision the device, it gives me an error message  "PKI Config push Failed - Unable to push configuration to device ip x.x.x.x. Device response - inconsistent value: Device refused one or more commands". I am able to add a 3850 switch. The Catalyst 9300 switch and 8200 router devices are running 17.9.4a, and Catalyst Center is running 2.3.7.7.

[aguckin]

Hello nsompura,

The Catalyst Center requires the highest level of CLI access for the devices that it discovers. For issues like these, please confirm that the account used for CLI access has priviledge level 15 by using the "show privilege" command while logged in with that user. If this is not 15 or if you are doing command authorization with ISE/AAA then you can run into issues like this.

Next, NETCONF is not strictly required for the 9300 series switches but it seems that this is a NETCONF related error. If you are using AAA authorization with a named method list you may need to configure yang to read from a specific named method list.  See the article Providing Privilege Access to NETCONF

If these are in place one final option is to disable NETCONF for the affected devices. To do this, select the device in Inventory and navigate to Actions > Inventory > Edit Device. Then scroll to the bottom of the Credentials tab and remove the NETCONF port.

If you do have the highest level of access for that account and NETCONF is enabled on the device then this may be a defect. Please open a TAC case for investigation.

Discovery Configuration Guidelines and Limitations

Providing Privilege Access to NETCONF

Alex G.

[nsompura]

Alex,

We are using ISE/AAA, and I have those commands in place. The device is authenticated at privilege level 15 when it logs in. I have also tried removing NETCONF and adding it back in, removing the device completely and adding it back with and without NETCONF, but nothing has worked.

If you have anything else that I can try, please let me know. I am already planning to contact TAC very soon for this issue.

[aguckin]

Hello nsompura,

The only other thing I would suggest is checking the license level for those devices. If you do not have either the DNA Essentials or DNA Advantage add-on licensing then some commands will fail to execute during CatC operations.  You can check this status in Catalyst Center through the license manager.  

Catalyst Center Licensing Manager

Cisco Catalyst and Cisco DNA Software Subscription Matrix for Switching 

Cisco DNA Software SD-WAN and Routing Matrices 

[nsompura]

I think I might've found more info about that (I was just trying to use Cisco's Licensing before). We use On-Prem CSSM for licensing. I was able to track down the host IP address. I wanted to ask what would I need to fill in for Client ID and Client Secret?

[ossniper]

Hello

I integrated Meraki Dashboard with Catalyst center - DNAC, only the Wireless are displayed and I can’t provision but the 9300 Meraki switches are not displaying. What could be the issue? 

Best regards.

[shane.carnahan]

Using Catalyst Center, 2.3.7.7, to manage wifi settings (non-SDA) on Cisco 9800 WLC. Is there an option to enable AAA server load balancing for the 802.1x radius requests? There is an option directly on the controller to do this but I can't seem to find it in Catalyst Center. I have SSIDs built and push fine. I've looked through feature templates and don't see anything there. Wondering if this is something that can't be done just yet in Catalyst Center.