- [Instructor] As we examine network automation further,
we want to look specifically at Cisco's DNA Center.
So let's take an overview of exactly what the solution is
and why it's useful.
Cisco DNA Center provides us with
both a command-line interface and a graphical interface
for network interaction.
This includes network design, device configuration,
the automatic provisioning of our devices,
and the ability to monitor and troubleshoot the network.
DNA stands for Digital Network Architecture.
And this can be either a physical appliance
deployed in your infrastructure
or there are cloud deployment options as well.
You probably know that this isn't
the first graphical interface that Cisco has introduced
for network management.
Even the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance Firewall line
provided a really good graphical interface.
But Cisco DNA Center is far and away
the most useful and in-depth GUI
that Cisco has offered to date.
With Cisco DNA Center in your network,
this has the capability of controlling
all of the Cisco devices found throughout that network.
From the main menu, there are four main sections
that we want to examine, those being,
design, policy, provision, and assurance.
The design section allows you to create
both logical topologies and physical maps
as a visual reference when you're designing.
We mentioned previously that the GUI interface
isn't new in the Cisco world
and likewise a central management platform
isn't a new concept either.
You may be familiar with Cisco Prime Infrastructure
or the end-of-life product called Cisco's APIC-EM.
If you're a user of either of these platforms,
Cisco DNA has the ability to import
existing typologies and maps directly from these platforms.
Also, DNA Center can leverage the Cisco Discovery Protocol,
or CDP, to automatically discover devices
and begin building a typology from scratch.
The policy section allows you to create
both user and device policies for enforcement.
The great thing about this is that
with all of your Cisco devices
under the control of DNA Center,
when you create secure access
or network segmentation policies,
DNA Center will automatically translate those
into device-specific configurations
and push those out to the appropriate devices.
This means that you don't have to go
to each individual device in your network
and alter anything like virtual networks
or access control policies, application policies,
all of those things.
You don't have to do that manually anymore.
Everything is taken care of
by DNA Center in an automated manner.
The provision section is where policies
are associated to users, devices or applications.
Here you would create categories of identities.
And in the graphical interface, you would simply
associate a policy with an identity group
in order to assign that policy.
So it's really, really simple.
Let's say, you had a list of identities
that included all employee laptops,
and you created a policy previously
to limit access to social media
while they're on the enterprise network.
You would simply associate that policy
with the identity group and DNA Center would automate
all of the configuration for you
and make sure that the security policy is enforced.
A big way this simplifies things
is that these policies will always follow the identity.
No matter where they're at in the network,
they'll always be tied together.
So this eliminates the need for redesigning networks
or for having a lot of complicated VLANs in many cases.
Any new devices introduced into the network,
let's say a new Cisco switch,
would automatically be provisioned
and assigned the appropriate policy,
what's called zero-touch provisioning.
As you can imagine, this will be super helpful
when you're provisioning remote office resources.
And the assurance section is where network monitoring
and troubleshooting takes place.
This, of course, deals with reactive monitoring
and troubleshooting when you receive reports
of an issue on the network,
but also proactive and predictive tools
through advanced artificial intelligence
and machine learning.
DNA Center continually collects data analytics
on your network and uses those for assurance purposes.
Things DNA Center can do with this full visibility
into a network include the ability
to predict performance issues before they happen
and to assist in troubleshooting
with suggested remediation steps when problems are detected.
Let's jump into Cisco's DNA Center sandbox environment now,
found on the DevNet website,
and take a look at this graphical interface.
Here on the main landing page, we get an overview
of everything relevant to us in the network.
We can see summaries of our policies.
We can see the network devices,
the network profiles, and so on.
Up at the very top, you can see those four main structures
that we already talked about earlier.
And if you scroll down
to the Network Configurations and Operations section,
you can see those outlined here as well.
If we take a look at the Design section,
let's click on that, you can see that you can zoom in
on a particular section of the map
and you can create your own site.
And from here you can add buildings,
you can add different floors,
you could create physical maps that we discuss earlier.
You can also see the Import option
to import existing typologies as well,
if you're a Cisco Prime Infrastructure user or APIC-EM user.
In the Policy section, if we go there,
we can see the number of our current policies
that we have in place.
And we'll see the different category groups
for each one of those.
Also helpful is the Policy History page
so that you can scroll down and see a history of revisions
that've been made and the scope of those revisions
just in case you need to roll back any changes.
The Provision section is populated
with our inventory of devices
that are available for provisioning.
Notice that once this loads
there's going to be an Upgrade Readiness button.
We see that right here.
We have an Upgrade Readiness button that will allow us
to perform a check for any upgrade needs,
which is very helpful.
If we actually click on an inventory device,
we can immediately see all kinds of important information
about the device, including the IP and Mac address
and lots of other things.
The final section is the Assurance section.
And, from here, we'll first see
a general health report about our network.
We can see the number of devices that we have
and the type of each device we have in our network,
including a breakdown of wired versus wireless clients.
We can click the Network Health button.
If we do that, View Network Health, once that loads,
we'll see the network health of our network,
and we'll see a rating from zero to 100.
And, of course, ours is rated at 100,
this being Cisco's sandbox environment.
At the top, under the Health dropdown menu,
if we look there we can see the same reports
for both clients and applications.
These metrics are part of the machine learning
that DNA Center uses in order to predict issues
and to suggest remediation steps
for any issues that are found.
So that's an overview of Cisco DNA Center.
In our subsequent videos, we'll look more closely
at some of the different pieces of this architecture.