Cisco Reside 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, that you must try the facility of mixing Cisco Meraki and Purple Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we’ll discover a number of widespread buyer use instances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We’ll present steering on tips on how to study extra, together with a demo. And in case you’ll be at Cisco Reside San Diego, we provide help to plan your agenda to study extra about these use instances.
Cisco Meraki and Purple 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 resulting from inconsistencies within the operational procedures. Cisco Meraki’s cloud-managed networking, coupled with Ansible Automation Platform, affords a strong and constant resolution to reinforce your IT operations.
Let’s discover among the prime Meraki use instances that can be obtainable 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 1000’s of recent 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, rising the chance 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 is just not 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 your entire 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 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 strategy is very helpful for corporations with a lot of geographically distributed areas, with operation groups that need to orchestrate a number of applied sciences, at scale, with a centralized strategy.
2. Audit and compliance test: Keep forward of the curve
Managing configurations throughout an enormous community with a number of areas can shortly grow to be 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 permits you to leverage the Meraki API utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to match a company’s settings and standing towards a set of greatest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that ought to be modified.
This consists of 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 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 dwell 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 small print.
By utilizing Ansible Automation Platform to keep up a supply of reality and audit for configuration drift, you may be sure that your Cisco Meraki community operates reliably, securely, and in compliance along with your group’s requirements. This proactive strategy enormously reduces threat 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 important safety greatest observe. In dynamic environments the place quite a few visitors could entry the community, static PSKs can grow 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 important safety activity, 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 entire Meraki entry factors. This may be scheduled as a recurring activity, 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 helpful IT assets.
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 a part of Us at Cisco Reside North America!
Able to see Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform in motion? Be a part of us at Cisco Reside North America! Listed here are just a few 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 Reside U.S. Catalog, a number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Purple Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Examine Cisco Reside U.S. Catalog, a number of instances obtainable
- Speaker: Daniel Chaves, Buyer Supply Architect, Cisco
Dive deeper with Purple Hat content material
For extra in-depth info, try the assets obtainable from Cisco and Purple Hat:
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