So let's recall where we left off. You may recall that we left our SD-WAN edges
in a state where they are in staging mode, meaning they can form control
connections, like control plane, orchestration plane, and management plane, but
they can't form data plane connections.
So we took a look at this command on the V-edge that showed us that those
control connections were online, and now we want to see it from the controller
side of things.
So we're going to log into the V smart and take a look here. But recall the
command we used on SD-WAN edges. We use this show SD-WAN control connections.
The problem is this isn't going to work over here on Viptela CLI, because again
, these devices are not running iOSXE, they are still running Viptela software.
This SD-WAN command right here on an iOSXE device more or less tells the device
that you're on that we're about to run classic Viptela CLI commands, or at
least commands inside of the SD-WAN call it context.
So at this point, what we're looking at is the fact that we don't need to
specify SD-WAN because we're just on classic Viptela CLI.
So I can drop the SD-WAN and say show control connections, and now we're going
to get a response like what we saw before.
The difference is that this is from the controller's perspective, meaning that
not only do I have a connection to all four of my V-edge is here, but then I
also see the connections to Vubond and VManage.
So these are showing up here, and this is great. I see my control connections.
I see my connections to the edges.
Yes, they are still called V-edge's here in Viptela CLI, even though we know
that they're not true Viptela V-edge's.
They're actually, we want to call them C-edge's, but Cisco is altogether
dropped to the V-edge and C-edge language, and now they just call them SD-WAN
edges.
Now, one thing to note here, and this is important to understand from a top
ology perspective, is when we look at an SD-WAN environment where the controller
has connections to all of the V-edge's across multiple devices.
Multiple WAN circuits or colors, we'll look later, multiple T-locks and all of
that, but in the end, if we've got multiple connections, multiple WAN circuits,
then we will build a tunnel across all of them.
In our case, we have a single connection per V-edge, because when we look,
actually let's just pull up CML here real quick.
When we look at our topology, we see that these controllers up here, they
really only have connection through what we're calling our internet connection.
This MPLS down here, which is a privately routed space, they don't have
connection through the MPLS cloud to these different connections.
So that, depending on our topology, might be there and it might not, but if we
do have connection through multiple WAN circuits, then we'll see those
connections coming online.
Now, at this moment, we're going to do two things.
We want to prepare for bringing the SD WAN data plane online. The first thing
we're going to do while we're in CML is go ahead and enable or start up this
unmanaged switch.
You might have already done this in your environment, and if so, then you're
good to go.
But again, this is an unmanaged switch, we just want edges 11, 12, and 14 to be
able to connect to each other through the MPLS cloud or circuit or however we
want to think of it.
So that's number one, enable that layer to switch so that we do have two
different WAN circuits available.
The second step is going to be to come over now to our VManage, our Manager
software, and we want to bring the devices out of our staging mode.
We want them to be in valid mode. And so we're going to come over to
configuration, and it feels a little bit odd to go to the certificate section,
but that's where we are going to go.
So we go to the WAN-edge list, we see our four different edge WANs here, and
under actions I can say validate the device.
So I'm going to validate all four of these, yeah, we're going to have to clear
out the little pop-ups in the corner to get to the option, there we go.
So now we can validate and validate.
So all of these now should be in a valid state.
Now importantly, let's not forget to go and click this link to send to
controllers. It's very important we do that.
It's why Cisco makes it red to catch our attention. So we send this to the
controllers and we allow it to sync.
Now, once that's done, we can go back here and we can scroll all the way to the
right and we can make sure that all of them are listed as valid here rather
than staging.
So at this point we are ready to bring these SD WAN devices or SD WAN edge
devices online and start forming data plane connections.