Cisco Reside North America is simply across the nook, and it’s the proper time to dive into the world of community automation. When you’re trying to streamline operations, increase effectivity, and guarantee compliance, it is advisable try the ability of mixing Cisco Meraki and Crimson Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we are going to discover a number of in style buyer use instances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We’ll present steering on find out how to study extra, together with a demo. And if you happen to’ll be at Cisco Reside San Diego, we assist you to plan your agenda to study extra about these use instances.
Cisco Meraki and Crimson Hat Ansible: higher collectively
For companies with a number of department places or complicated community infrastructures, managing IT infrastructure manually is a recipe for human errors and inefficiency, largely as a consequence of inconsistencies within the operational procedures. Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking, coupled with Ansible Automation Platform, affords a strong and constant answer to boost your IT operations.
Let’s discover among the prime Meraki use instances that might be obtainable with Ansible Automation Platform, within the type of a Validated Content material Assortment, that can simplify your operations lifecycle: department provisioning, audit and compliance checks, configuration drift audits, and common rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys.
1. Department provisioning: quick, constant, and dependable
Think about deploying lots of or 1000’s of recent websites, retail shops, distant workplaces, or perhaps a single website. Historically, this course of would contain hours of handbook configuration for every location, growing the danger of errors and inconsistencies. Every website may require constant configurations for firewalls, switches, and Wi-Fi entry factors, all of which should align with safety insurance policies. Handbook provisioning will not be solely time consuming but in addition susceptible to human error, probably resulting in safety vulnerabilities or community outages.
With Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform, website enlargement turns into a streamlined, automated course of. Ansible Automation Platform lets you create reusable Ansible playbooks, that are automated scripts that outline the specified state of your community. These Ansible playbooks can work together with the Meraki API to carry out configurations throughout all your units. This implies you’ll be able to outline a template or “golden configuration” for a typical department after which apply that configuration persistently throughout all new websites.
Steps required for a department provisioning orchestrated workflow:
- Create networks and declare units.
- Configure gateway (firewall) and WAN.
- Configure switches.
- Configure SSID and entry factors.
- Automate documentation and reporting to replace enterprise techniques together with Sources of Fact
Through the use of Ansible Automation Platform to automate department provisioning with Cisco Meraki, organizations can obtain a extra agile, dependable, and safe community infrastructure. This method is very useful for firms with a lot of geographically distributed places, with operation groups that must orchestrate a number of applied sciences, at scale, with a centralized method.
2. Audit and compliance test: Keep forward of the curve
Managing configurations throughout an enormous community with a number of places can shortly change into complicated. Sustaining consistency and guaranteeing compliance with inner insurance policies and exterior rules is essential. That is the place automating audit and compliance checks with Ansible Automation Platform turns into invaluable.
Ansible Automation Platform lets you leverage the Meraki API utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to check a company’s settings and standing in opposition to a set of greatest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that ought to be modified.
This consists of common checks, in addition to Wi-Fi and swap compliance checks.
3. Configuration drift audit: keep a supply of fact to your firewall insurance policies
Configuration drift can result in surprising community habits and safety vulnerabilities. With Ansible Automation Platform, you’ll be able to set up a “good community” baseline—your supply of fact. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your reside community configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, particularly in essential areas like firewall insurance policies. You resolve if you would like Ansible Automation Platform to robotically right any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the small print.
Through the use of Ansible Automation Platform to keep up a supply of fact and audit for configuration drift, you’ll be able to make sure that your Cisco Meraki community operates reliably, securely, and in compliance along with your group’s requirements. This proactive method tremendously reduces danger and streamlines community operations.
4. Scheduled rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys: improve safety
Commonly updating Wi-Fi pre-shared keys (PSK) for visitor networks is a essential safety greatest follow. In dynamic environments the place quite a few visitors might entry the community, static PSKs can change into a safety vulnerability. If a PSK is compromised, unauthorized customers can simply achieve entry. A scheduled rotation of those keys considerably reduces this danger. Manually altering PSKs each month throughout a number of websites is a tedious and error-prone course of, however Ansible Automation Platform can automate this important safety activity, guaranteeing constant and well timed updates.
Ansible Automation Platform can be utilized to generate new, robust PSKs robotically after which push these new keys to all your Meraki entry factors. This may be scheduled as a recurring activity, guaranteeing that the PSKs are rotated each month with out handbook intervention. This automated course of not solely enhances safety but in addition frees up useful IT sources.
Why This Issues: key benefits of Cisco Meraki and Crimson Hat Ansible Automation Platform
By combining Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking with Ansible Automation Platform, organizations obtain:
- Speedy deployment
- Proactive compliance
- Operational stability
- Enhanced safety
Be part of Us at Cisco Reside North America!
Able to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in motion? Be part of us at Cisco Reside North America! Listed here are a number of classes so as to add to your agenda that showcase the ability of those applied sciences:
Unite Meraki, Catalyst, and ISE with Ansible – DEVWKS-2301
- Monday, Jun 9, 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM PDT
- Audio system:
- Francois Caen, Product Supervisor, Cisco – Distinguished Speaker
- Oren Brigg, Engineering Product Supervisor, Cisco
- Craig Egan, System Engineer, Cisco
Extending automation to distant department networks (Meraki) – DEVRHL-1004
- Verify Cisco Reside U.S. Catalog, a number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Crimson Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Verify Cisco Reside U.S. Catalog, a number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Buyer Supply Architect, Cisco
Dive deeper with Crimson Hat content material
For extra in-depth data, try the sources obtainable from Cisco and Crimson Hat:
You too can:
We’d love to listen to what you suppose. Ask a Query, Remark Under, and Keep Related with #CiscoPartners on social!
Cisco Companions Fb | @CiscoPartners X/Twitter | Cisco Companions LinkedIn
Share:
