In the last skill in this series, we took a look at how to prepare our
environment for
bringing our edges online.
That required getting our manager or a V-Manage ready to go.
We had to go out to Cisco's Plug and Play Connect portal, create some virtual
devices,
more or less from an identity perspective, and then prepare the manager by
going in there
and downloading that edge list.
That is going to allow us to create configurations, which we're going to do in
this skill, but
bootstrap configurations that allow us to bring our edges online and
operational.
Now, one big important caveat to this whole process as we dive into the skill
is that
we are using the manual bootstrap method because CML requires it.
We don't have the ability to do ZTP or really plug-in player PNP inside of
every single lab
environment.
Now, your lab environment might be good to go, but it's going to require making
sure
we have DHCP, DNS access, and a lot of things that we don't necessarily always
have right
away in a lab environment.
If you do have that, then you can use the automatic provisioning potentially,
and we'll
take a look at how to do that later in this skill.
For now, our focus is going to be on using that bootstrap method.
And what we're going to do then, as we take a look here in CML, is come out to
these edge
devices, and when we click on a device in CML, it allows us to create some
initial configuration.
So this configuration will be applied to the device when it comes online.
Now, we've covered this before.
Once we hit the play button on this device, so I can come here and click start,
it's
going to create a virtual machine on the back end here on the server that is
representative
of this edge device.
Once the initial configuration has been applied, we can no longer edit
configuration in here
because it's already been created.
So if you find yourself in a place at any point in time where you can't come
out here,
edit the configuration, click save, that probably means that this device has
already been powered
on, and therefore the virtual device has already been created by CML.
Usually what that's, or the best way to tell, is to look for a little X in the
corner here.
Again, we've covered this in the past, but just in case you do find yourself in
a place
where you can't quite do what you think you're trying to do, that might be the
problem, at
which point we can right click on this and say that we want to wipe actually
and delete
the device because I haven't turned it on, I can't wipe it.
That would be the step that we'd have to take at that point.
So we'd wipe the device, get rid of the configuration, and then delete the
device which would allow
us, well, actually we wouldn't have to delete the device at that point because
by wiping
it, it gets rid of the back end virtual machine.
So then we could just start over effectively with a new virtual edge device.
All right, so some of those logistics now have been taken care of, but let's
just talk
about the goal.
So the goal here is to get to the point where we can paste a configuration in
here, which
is going to be used by these edge devices.
We're going to use our vManager, our manager to create those configurations.
So when we look at the config here, we see this #cloudconfigsection.
Notice that this format might look a little familiar, it's in the animal format
.
And so Cisco has given us a template here that includes the ability to include
a one
time password or OTP, and that's going to effectively be a token that makes up
for the
fact that we don't have a certificate on a virtual device.
So it's going to replace the certificate for authentication.
We're going to provide a VBond IP address and notice it says replace this right
here,
V8K with a valid UUID.
Well, this UUID has been provided to us by Cisco.
And so that's how this device will effectively be identified by VManage, you'll
get the appropriate
configuration.
So some of these other parameters will be filled in.
And then down here, the certificates that the edge device is going to trust.
We get this also from our manager device and we can just paste it in.
So that is the goal here of what we're trying to accomplish, just wanted to
kind of make
sure that we have the same perspective on what we're trying to do before we
dive in.
So let's go ahead and just jump into the next section.
We're going to log into manager and start to perform this configuration of our
edge