Cisco Dwell 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, you must try the facility of mixing Cisco Meraki and Pink Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we are going to discover a number of common buyer use circumstances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We’ll present steerage on tips on how to study extra, together with a demo. And in the event you’ll be at Cisco Dwell San Diego, we enable you plan your agenda to study extra about these use circumstances.
Cisco Meraki and Pink Hat Ansible: higher collectively
For companies with a number of department areas or complicated community infrastructures, managing IT infrastructure manually is a recipe for human errors and inefficiency, largely on account of inconsistencies within the operational procedures. Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking, coupled with Ansible Automation Platform, gives a sturdy and constant answer to boost your IT operations.
Let’s discover among the high Meraki use circumstances that will probably be accessible with Ansible Automation Platform, within the type of a Validated Content material Assortment, that 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 a whole lot or hundreds of recent 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, 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 will not be solely time consuming but in addition vulnerable to human error, doubtlessly 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 persistently 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 methods 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 strategy is particularly helpful for corporations with numerous geographically distributed areas, with operation groups that should orchestrate a number of applied sciences, at scale, with a centralized strategy.
2. Audit and compliance verify: Keep forward of the curve
Managing configurations throughout an unlimited community with a number of areas can shortly turn out to be complicated. Sustaining consistency and guaranteeing compliance with inside insurance policies and exterior rules is crucial. 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 check a corporation’s settings and standing towards a set of finest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that must be modified.
This consists of basic checks, in addition to Wi-Fi and change compliance checks.
3. Configuration drift audit: preserve 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 may set up a “good community” baseline—your supply of reality. Then, Ansible Automation Platform compares your stay community configurations to this baseline and identifies any deviations, particularly in crucial areas like firewall insurance policies. You resolve if you’d like Ansible Automation Platform to mechanically right any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the small print.
By utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to take care of a supply of reality 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 strategy drastically 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 crucial safety finest observe. In dynamic environments the place quite a few visitors might entry the community, static PSKs can turn out to be a safety vulnerability. If a PSK is compromised, unauthorized customers can simply acquire 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, guaranteeing constant and well timed updates.
Ansible Automation Platform can be utilized to generate new, sturdy PSKs mechanically after which push these new keys to all your Meraki entry factors. This may be scheduled as a recurring job, 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 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 Dwell North America!
Able to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in motion? Be a part of us at Cisco Dwell North America! Listed below are a number of periods 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
- Verify Cisco Dwell 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
- Verify Cisco Dwell 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:
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