Cisco Stay North America is simply across the nook, and it’s the proper time to dive into the world of community automation. If you happen to’re trying to streamline operations, enhance effectivity, and guarantee compliance, you might want to try the ability of mixing Cisco Meraki and Pink 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 are going to present steerage on learn how to be taught extra, together with a demo. And when you’ll be at Cisco Stay San Diego, we make it easier to plan your agenda to be taught extra about these use instances.
Cisco Meraki and Pink Hat Ansible: higher collectively
For companies with a number of department places or advanced community infrastructures, managing IT infrastructure manually is a recipe for human errors and inefficiency, principally because of inconsistencies within the operational procedures. Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking, coupled with Ansible Automation Platform, provides a sturdy and constant resolution to boost your IT operations.
Let’s discover among the high Meraki use instances that can be accessible 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 hundreds of recent websites, retail shops, distant workplaces, or perhaps a single web site. Historically, this course of would contain hours of guide configuration for every location, rising the danger of errors and inconsistencies. Every web site would possibly require constant configurations for firewalls, switches, and Wi-Fi entry factors, all of which should align with safety insurance policies. Guide provisioning just isn’t solely time consuming but in addition liable to human error, probably resulting in safety vulnerabilities or community outages.
With Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform, web site enlargement turns into a streamlined, automated course of. Ansible Automation Platform means that you can 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 your whole gadgets. This implies you possibly can outline a template or “golden configuration” for a typical department after which apply that configuration constantly throughout all new websites.
Steps required for a department provisioning orchestrated workflow:
- Create networks and declare gadgets.
- Configure gateway (firewall) and WAN.
- Configure switches.
- Configure SSID and entry factors.
- Automate documentation and reporting to replace enterprise programs together with Sources of Reality
By utilizing 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 verify: Keep forward of the curve
Managing configurations throughout an unlimited community with a number of places can shortly turn into advanced. Sustaining consistency and making certain compliance with inside insurance policies and exterior rules is important. That is the place automating audit and compliance checks with Ansible Automation Platform turns into invaluable.
Ansible Automation Platform means that you can leverage the Meraki API utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to check a corporation’s settings and standing towards a set of greatest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that must be modified.
This contains normal checks, in addition to Wi-Fi and swap compliance checks.
3. Configuration drift audit: keep a supply of reality on your firewall insurance policies
Configuration drift can result in surprising community habits and safety vulnerabilities. With Ansible Automation Platform, you possibly can set up a “good community” baseline—your supply of reality. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your dwell community configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, particularly in important areas like firewall insurance policies. You determine in order for you Ansible Automation Platform to mechanically right any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the main points.
By utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to keep up a supply of reality and audit for configuration drift, you possibly can make sure that your Cisco Meraki community operates reliably, securely, and in compliance along with your group’s requirements. This proactive method vastly reduces threat and streamlines community operations.
4. Scheduled rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys: improve safety
Usually updating Wi-Fi pre-shared keys (PSK) for visitor networks is a important safety greatest observe. In dynamic environments the place quite a few visitors might entry the community, static PSKs can turn into a safety vulnerability. If a PSK is compromised, unauthorized customers can simply achieve entry. A scheduled rotation of those keys considerably reduces this threat. 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 job, making certain constant and well timed updates.
Ansible Automation Platform can be utilized to generate new, robust PSKs mechanically after which push these new keys to your whole Meraki entry factors. This may be scheduled as a recurring job, making certain that the PSKs are rotated each month with out guide intervention. This automated course of not solely enhances safety but in addition frees up priceless IT assets.
Why This Issues: key benefits of Cisco Meraki and Pink Hat Ansible Automation Platform
By combining Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking with Ansible Automation Platform, organizations obtain:
- Fast deployment
- Proactive compliance
- Operational stability
- Enhanced safety
Be a part of Us at Cisco Stay North America!
Able to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in motion? Be a part of us at Cisco Stay North America! Listed here are just a few periods 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
- Test Cisco Stay U.S. Catalog, a number of instances accessible
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Pink Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Test Cisco Stay U.S. Catalog, a number of instances accessible
- Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Buyer Supply Architect, Cisco
Dive deeper with Pink Hat content material
For extra in-depth info, try the assets accessible from Cisco and Pink Hat:
You can even:
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