A-04 | Operations, Dashboards, and Events

Overview

In this lab we will explore some of the features of CloudVision to manage and operate your campus network.

Intro to Network Hierarchy

Campus networks can be rather extensive in size and their reach, including many sites, buildings, and floors where your precious network gear is deployed. The Network Hierarchy view aligns closely with the same way you'll manage your wireless access points in CV-CUE:

1. Click on the Network Hierarchy tab on the left

   

2. Note your Network contains the workshop campus, campus pod, and access-pod as you drill down.

3. Click on Workshop to view a summary of all the devices deployed under the top level campus Workshop

4. Click on IDF1 and note we now get more detail about the switches and clients connected to those devices in the Overview tab.

   

5. Click on the Front Panel tab to view more detail about what's connected, the capabilities of your switches in the stack, and access to quick actions to make changes on the interfaces.

   

6. Let's now use Network Hierarchy to drill down into a compliance issue.

Configuration Compliance

The Network Hierarchy view is one of many ways to visualize your campus, namely to drill down to a specific area of the network to configure or troubleshoot an issue.

to showcase compliance panel and 2 devices should flagged (due to rollback above). This will open the compliance dashboard and we can sync the config from there via Change Control.

1. If you're not already on the Network Hierarchy page, click the tab on the left.

2. Click the top level Network object, and take note of the Compliance panel on the right

   

3. We have 2 devices that are violating the Configuration compliance item

4. Click on Compliance and you should see the Compliance Overview with our 2 devices out of configuration compliance

5. Let's select your device below and click Sync Config

   

6. This will create a Change Control with our two devices

   

7. Click on the Review and Approve

   Why is our configuration out of sync?!

   Recall CloudVision is designed to act as the "Source of Truth" for your configuration. It contains a designed configuration it considers the standard, driven through configuration in Studios. When we added our Vlan in the previous step, we rolled that change back, and now there is a discrepancy.

   This could be a real life scenario where a VLAN was added, rolled back due to an unforeseen issue, and scheduled to be added at a later date. We need that vlan, we are reminded the device is out of compliance, and possibly for a good reason!

8. Click on Approve and Execute when you're ready

   

9. This is pushing the designed configuration back to the device

10. Let's go back to our Network Hierarchy or Devices > Compliance Overview and we should see are switches are not in compliance again.

    Network HierarchyCompliance Overview

    

    

Dashboards

Dashboards are an important way to visualize commonly requested information, we've already seen the Campus Health Dashboard a few times in previous labs. This lab section shows you how to navigate the built-in dashboards and customize your own.

Campus Health Overview

1. Open the Dashboards Section and we will see the Campus Health Overview dashboard is set to our home dashboard.

   Dashboard Home Page

   CloudVision has a couple features that customize a users experience. There is a built in profile for Campus Monitoring that can be applied to a user role, this will set the "Campus Health Overview" dashboard as the primary dashboard. A user can also select any built-in or custom dashboard as the home/primary dashboard.

   

2. You’ll be presented with a curated selection of common campus related monitoring tools

   

3. Feel free to explore the Campus Health dashboard briefly and then navigate back to the Dashboards landing page by selecting Dashboards in the upper left.

   

Device Health

1. Next, Select the Device Hardware dashboard

   

2. By default, this dashboard selects all devices.

   

3. Change the dashboard to select only leaf1a or leaf1b by changing from device: * to device: to match a single device. Once you’ve selected an individual device, the dashboard will filter to results for only this device.

   

4. Navigate back to the Dashboards landing page by clicking Dashboards in upper left.

Custom Dashboard

Next, let’s add a new customized dashboard. There are three main constructs we will touch on here:

• Metrics (Devices): telemetry data specific to a device
• Metrics (Interfaces): telemetry data specific to the interfaces of a device
• Summaries: a metric or set of metrics summarized into a single view

There is a lot to unpack in dashboards as you have a significant amount of power in customizing the data and look of your dashboard. See how dashboards are quickly created before we get started.

Let's get started:

1. Click the + New Dashboard button.

   

2. Provide a useful Name for the Dashboard, such as Pod##-Student#

   

3. Next, let’s add a combination of visualizations that we want to capture

4. First, click the drop down on the upper right and change from Metrics to Summaries

5. Within the Summaries list, click on, or drag the Events widget into the dashboard canvas

   

6. Within the Events tile now added to your dashboard, click the Configure button

7. Within the right side menu bar, select the following:

   Dashboard Settings

   Key	Value
   View Mode	Severity Timeline
   Show Active Only	True
   Dataset	Access-Pod: IDF1

   

8. Dismiss the customization menu by clicking the in upper right corner

9. Next, change the Summaries menu back to Metrics

   

10. Within the Metrics menu, click and drag a Table and a Horizon Graph to the canvas

    Drag the tiles

    You can drag the tiles around by the respective menu bars and resize each tile using the lower right corner handles.

    

11. Let's configure the Table first by clicking the then click the three-dots menu and click Configure

    Table Settings

    Key	Value
    Data Source	Devices
    Metrics #1	802.1X Interface Count
    Metrics #2	CPU Utilization
    Metrics #3	Total Power Granted
    Metrics #4	ARP Table Size
    Metrics #5	Boot Time

    

12. Dismiss the customization menu with the button in upper right

13. Now let's configure the Horizon Graph by clicking the then click the three-dots menu and click Configure

    Horizon Graph Settings

    Target your student device below!

    Key	Value
    Data Source	Interfaces
    View Type	Multiple Metrics for One Source
    Interface (device)	pod##-leaf1
    Interface (interface)	Ethernet1
    Metrics #1	Bitrate In
    Metrics #2	Bitrate Out
    Metrics #3	Operational Status
    Metrics #4	Interface Authentication State

    

14. Dismiss the customization menu with the button in upper right

15. You can resize and drag the components around, but you should have a new dashboard that looks something like this.

    

16. Save and completed the dashboard customization by clicking the Done button in upper menu bar

Events

In this section, we will explore the Events stream and the tools and filters to help process and manage critical errors versus informational data.

1. First, open Events from the menu bar

   

2. Next, select a different time frame for the summary visualization, click the current time selection and change this to 1 Hour

   

3. You can also toggle between a bar graph and event count display

   Events GraphEvents Table

   

   

4. Focusing on the Event List next, Note the Export button to download the current Event list as CSV. Notice you can download All Events or only Selected

   

5. Next, select the Gear icon to toggle Event List Roll Up. This setting combines repeated events into groups. Toggle this On and Off, watch the effect this has on the list of Events.

   

6. Next, utilizing the Event Filters on the right pane is important to reduce the amount of data displayed.

   Filter Settings

   Key	Value
   Severity	Critical, Error
   Type #1	`Unexpected Link Shutdown
   Type #2	Device Clock Out of Sync

   

7. Acknowledge and Unacknowledging events

   1. To acknowledge from the filtered event list, select specific events and Acknowledge them.

      

   2. Adding a note is optional, select the Acknowledge button to mark these selected events.

      

   3. Acknowledged events are not deleted from the event list, only flagged as acknowledged and can be referenced by changing the filtered Acknowledgement State. Click Acknowledgement State and select Acknowledged

      

   4. Un-acknowledging an event can be done in the same way, click the box to the left of the Acknowledged event, and click Unacknowledge at the top of the event list.

      

8. Events and filtering lab section complete!

Customize Notifications

In this lab, you will configure CloudVision to send an email alert to an email address using the built-in “SendGrid” email service. There are other notification systems natively supported in CloudVision, but we'll focus on email for this lab (Example: email, chat, SNMP, Syslog, etc).

1. Configure SendGrid email service.
2. If you are not already, click on the Events menu option.

3. Click on the Notifications button in the top right of the screen.

   

4. Check the system status for the Config back-end and Relay back-end

   Status Unknown!?

   Before receivers and notifications are configured, the status will be “Unknown”.

   Status UnknownStatus Ready

   

   

5. Now, configure the SendGrid receiver by clicking on Receivers in the menu, then click on the Add Receiver button. Name the receiver SendGrid for Campus ATD, then click the Add Configuration button and select SendGrid from the menu options.

   

6. Type in cvaas-alerts@arista.com in the email address field. This is a shared email address that you can receive emails at during this lab and check the Send notification when events are resolved checkbox. Click the Save button in the upper right hand side of the screen to save your new receiver.

   

7. Once you are happy with receiver’s configuration, click the Save button at the top of the screen

8. Next, configure a Rule to use the new receiver. Click on the Rules menu option, then click Add Rule

   

9. Configure Rule Conditions for this rule. Click on the + Device button, then choose your switch from the Device drop down box.

   Add DeviceSelect Device

   

   

10. Now click on the + Event Type button. Add Event Types by choosing them from the drop down box as shown in the image below:

    Add EventSelect Event

    

    

11. Select all of the severity options by clicking on the + Severity button and choosing the options from the drop down box.

    

12. Next, choose your new SendGrid for Campus ATD receiver from the Receiver dropdown box, select the Continue Checking Rules box, and save your changes by clicking on the Save button.

    SAVE the changes!!

    Make sure to save your changes in this screen with the Save button along the top of your screen.

    

13. Now lets test your new receiver and rule

14. Click on the Status menu option. Configure the Test Notification Sender by changing the Event Type to be Device Stopped Streaming and selecting your switch from the Device drop down box. Click the Send Test Notification button.

    Send NotificationNotification Sent

    

    

15. After a minute or two, you should receive the email alert at the email address you configured in the Receiver

    

16. You can remove your event receiver to avoid additional emails before continuing!

🎉 CONGRATS! You have completed the Wired labs! 🎉