SD-Access Assurance

SD-Access Assurance

Now a days it is real challenge to keep Network performance good and provide good customer experience. In today’s scenarios IT is facing following challenges.

• IT only starts troubleshooting issue when Issue happens and reported. It can be said as Reactive Troubleshooting.
• Every Enterprise has large number to tools to manage variety of Network Infrastructure and environment, which creates complexity as each toll provides its own reports and are not sync to each other.
• Tools providing data are not correlated, due to which it is not possible to drive actionable insights.

Cisco DNA provides Assurance feature which has ability to quantify network availability and identify network risk. Cisco DNA Assurance has following elements.

• Telemetry, Key Performance Indicator & Trends
• Health Scores & insights
• Reporting

Assurance In context of SD-Access:

Cisco SD-Access provides analytics and Insights in two main categories.

Network Underlay: Analytics Provided for Network Underlay includes following Non-fabric Elements.

• Network – Traditional ( LAN , WLAN , WAN ) protocols and tables
• Devices – Switches , Router , wireless software
• Client : Wired and Wireless Client status and statistics
• Application: Traditional Wired and Wireless flow status, Statistics and performance.

Fabric Overlay: Analytics provided for fabric Overlay includes following elements.

• Fabric Reachability:
• Fabric devices: Fabric Nodes which maps entries, protocols.
• Fabric Clients: Client onboarding and shared services like DNS, DHCP, AAA, and RADIUS.
• Group based policies: ISE (pxGrid, AAA), Border and edge node policy entries.

Telemetry:

Cisco DNA Collects contextual data from network Infrastructure layer like router , switch , WLC , Firewalls etc. and also from various other systems connected to network like ISE , ITSM , IPAM etc. . These Data are correlated in DNA Data Analytics engine to provide actionable insights, root cause analysis, Impact assessment, and Network and application health.

Below are various Telemetry Data Collection Mechanism:

Streaming Telemetry: It helps network devices to send the real time telemetry information to DNA center, which provides following benefits:

• Low & Quantifiable CPU overhead
• Optimized data exports ( KPI , Events )
• Event driven Notification.

Standard Telemetry: Uses SNMP, SNMP Traps, Syslog’s message, Netflow to get flow related information, Operational data using CLI show commands.

Telemetry Collection with Network Sensors: To provide solution and to identify issue, proactively test is required to check quality of network connection end to end and on multiple Network Elements. Which also further includes following:

• Onboarding: How Long Client gets on boarded, and how long it takes to get IP address
• Reachability: Are all shared network services like DNS, DHCP, AAA reachable and stable
• Performance: How are critical application performing?

DNA Center Sensor Management can use dedicated AP or can convert AP in to Sensor Mode using Flexible Radio Assignment (FRA) and from these sensors the scheduled tests will feed corresponding telemetry back to DNA center.