Cisco Dwell 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 trying to streamline operations, enhance effectivity, and guarantee compliance, it is advisable take a look at the facility of mixing Cisco Meraki and Purple Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we are going to discover a number of well-liked buyer use circumstances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We’ll present steering on how you can be taught extra, together with a demo. And in case you’ll be at Cisco Dwell San Diego, we provide help to plan your agenda to be taught extra about these use circumstances.
Cisco Meraki and Purple 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 as a consequence 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 a few of the high Meraki use circumstances that will probably be obtainable with Ansible Automation Platform, within the type of a Validated Content material Assortmentthat may 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 latest websites, retail shops, distant places of work, or perhaps a single web site. Historically, this course of would contain hours of guide configuration for every location, growing the chance 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. Handbook provisioning shouldn’t be solely time consuming but in addition susceptible to human error, doubtlessly resulting in safety vulnerabilities or community outages.
With Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform, web site growth 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 your whole units. 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 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 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 strategy is particularly helpful 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 strategy.
2. Audit and compliance examine: Keep forward of the curve
Managing configurations throughout an enormous community with a number of places can rapidly change into complicated. Sustaining consistency and making certain compliance with inside insurance policies and exterior laws is important. 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 corporation’s settings and standing in opposition to a set of greatest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that needs to be modified.
This consists of common checks, in addition to Wi-Fi and swap compliance checks.
3. Configuration drift audit: preserve a supply of reality on 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 reality. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your reside community configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, particularly in important areas like firewall insurance policies. You determine if you need Ansible Automation Platform to routinely right any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the main points.
By utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to take care of a supply of reality and audit for configuration drift, you may make sure that your Cisco Meraki community operates reliably, securely, and in compliance together with your group’s requirements. This proactive strategy significantly reduces threat and streamlines community operations.
4. Scheduled rotation of Wi-Fi pre-shared keys: improve safety
Often updating Wi-Fi pre-shared keys (PSK) for visitor networks is a important safety greatest apply. In dynamic environments the place quite a few friends could 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 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 significant safety job, making certain constant and well timed updates.
Ansible Automation Platform can be utilized to generate new, sturdy PSKs routinely 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 precious IT sources.
Why This Issues: key benefits of Cisco Meraki and Purple 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 part of Us at Cisco Dwell North America!
Able to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in motion? Be part of us at Cisco Dwell North America! Listed here are a number of classes so as to add to your agenda that showcase the facility 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 Dwell U.S. Cataloga number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Purple Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Examine Cisco Dwell U.S. Cataloga number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Buyer Supply Architect, Cisco
Dive deeper with Purple Hat content material
For extra in-depth data, take a look at the sources obtainable from Cisco and Purple Hat:
You can too:
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:
