Cisco Cisco Configuration Engine 1.4 Guía De Información
Data Sheet
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Q.
What are zero-touch deployment and near-zero touch deployment?
A.
Zero-touch deployment (ZTD) refers to the deployment process such that no user interaction with the device is
required other than connecting the necessary cables and powering up to bring up the remote device to its
desired configuration. Near-ZTD refers to the fact that in the deployment process the only required user
interaction with the remote device is connecting the necessary cables and powering up to bring up the device to
its desired configuration. In both ZTD and near-ZTD, device staging is not required; furthermore, technical
expertise—especially knowledge of the command-line interface (CLI) configuration—is not required in the
remote location.
Q.
How is the Cisco Configuration Engine different from other deployment tools?
A.
Traditional management tools typically use Telnet or the Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol to log in to the devices
and apply configurations. This process emulates and potentially automates a network engineer’s manual
process. The deployment process using the traditional approach requires coordination between the deployment
personnel and the network operations center (NOC) so that a NOC engineer knows when to start logging in to
the devices.
In contrast, the Cisco Configuration Engine uses deployment agents to accomplish most of the work. The
deployment agents are called the CNS agents, which act as the deployment personnel by asynchronously
initiating connection back to the Cisco Configuration Engine located in the NOC. By preparing the Cisco
Configuration Engine appropriately to accept and process the connection request, the Cisco Configuration
Engine positively identifies the device, generates the full configuration, and automates the CNS agents to apply
the configuration to bring up the device. This distributed-agent approach eliminates the need for coordination
between the deployment personnel and the NOC, and provides a highly scalable deployment solution.
deployment agents are called the CNS agents, which act as the deployment personnel by asynchronously
initiating connection back to the Cisco Configuration Engine located in the NOC. By preparing the Cisco
Configuration Engine appropriately to accept and process the connection request, the Cisco Configuration
Engine positively identifies the device, generates the full configuration, and automates the CNS agents to apply
the configuration to bring up the device. This distributed-agent approach eliminates the need for coordination
between the deployment personnel and the NOC, and provides a highly scalable deployment solution.
Q.
Do we need to install the CNS agents onto the devices?
A.
No. The CNS agents come with Cisco IOS Software. Please confirm with your account representative to ensure
the necessary CNS agents are supported by the platform and by the Cisco IOS Software image version. For
information about what Cisco devices are supported by the Cisco Configuration Engine, please refer to the
Cisco Configuration Engine data sheet.
Q.
My network has some devices that do not provide CNS agent support; can I still use the Cisco
Configuration Engine to manage them?
A.
Yes, but with some limitations. The Cisco Configuration Engine provides a module called the Intelligent Modular
Gateway (IMGW) Device Module Development toolkit to allow customized device access plug-in. The toolkit
defines the southbound interface of the IMGW and provides a registration utility to allow you to register plug-in
device modules into IMGW. The plug-in, typically a set of scripts, allows IMGW to access the device. These
devices are called non-agent devices in Cisco Configuration Engine. Because there is no agent to initiate
connections, the Cisco Configuration Engine does not support ZTD for non-agent devices; further, because
there is no agent to provide distributive configuration and image update tasks, the total scaling and performance
of the Cisco Configuration Engine are less than those of CNS agent-enabled devices.
For more information about developing a plug-in, please refer to the Cisco Configuration Engine User Guide
located in the software CD.
located in the software CD.
Q.
How does the device know how to initiate connection back to the Cisco Configuration Engine?
A.
The device needs to have a bootstrap configuration, including three important steps:
●
Establish IP connectivity if it is not available yet. Optionally, you can specify more security measures such as
encryption, tunneling, and authentication.
●
Indicate where to “call home”—the Cisco Configuration Engine IP address.
●
Indicate the identification method for the CNS agents—the way that the agents should identify themselves to
the Cisco Configuration Engine.