Cisco Stay North America is simply across the nook, and it’s the right time to dive into the world of community automation. In the event you’re seeking to streamline operations, enhance effectivity, and guarantee compliance, that you must take a look at the ability of mixing Cisco Meraki and Pink Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we’ll discover a number of well-liked buyer use instances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We are going to present steerage on easy methods to be taught extra, together with a demo. And in case you’ll be at Cisco Stay San Diego, we provide help 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 complicated 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 strong and constant answer to reinforce your IT operations.
Let’s discover a number of the high Meraki use instances that might be out there 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 a whole bunch or 1000’s of latest websites, retail shops, distant places of work, or perhaps a single web site. Historically, this course of would contain hours of handbook configuration for every location, growing the danger of errors and inconsistencies. Every web site 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 vulnerable 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 permits you to 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 gadgets. This implies you may 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 Fact
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 helpful for corporations with numerous geographically distributed places, with operation groups that need to 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 out to be complicated. Sustaining consistency and making certain compliance with inner insurance policies and exterior laws is vital. That is the place automating audit and compliance checks with Ansible Automation Platform turns into invaluable.
Ansible Automation Platform permits you to leverage the Meraki API utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to match a corporation’s settings and standing towards a set of finest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that ought to be modified.
This consists of basic 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 sudden community conduct and safety vulnerabilities. With Ansible Automation Platform, you may set up a “good community” baseline—your supply of fact. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your stay community configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, particularly in vital areas like firewall insurance policies. You resolve in order for you Ansible Automation Platform to mechanically appropriate any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the small print.
By utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to keep up a supply of fact and audit for configuration drift, you may be sure that your Cisco Meraki community operates reliably, securely, and in compliance together with your group’s requirements. This proactive method enormously reduces danger and streamlines community operations.
4. Scheduled rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys: improve safety
Repeatedly updating Wi-Fi pre-shared keys (PSK) for visitor networks is a vital safety finest observe. In dynamic environments the place quite a few company could entry the community, static PSKs can turn out to be 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 significant safety process, 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 all your Meraki entry factors. This may be scheduled as a recurring process, making certain that the PSKs are rotated each month with out handbook intervention. This automated course of not solely enhances safety but in addition frees up priceless IT sources.
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 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
- Examine Cisco Stay U.S. Catalog, a number of occasions out there
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Pink Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Examine Cisco Stay U.S. Catalog, a number of occasions out there
- Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Buyer Supply Architect, Cisco
Dive deeper with Pink Hat content material
For extra in-depth data, take a look at the sources out there from Cisco and Pink Hat:
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