Cisco Dwell 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 seeking to streamline operations, enhance effectivity, and guarantee compliance, that you must take a look at the facility of mixing Cisco Meraki and Purple Hat Ansible Automation Platform.
On this weblog we’ll discover a number of widespread buyer use circumstances for Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform. We’ll present steering on how you can study extra, together with a demo. And in the event you’ll be at Cisco Dwell San Diego, we show you how to plan your agenda to study extra about these use circumstances.
Cisco Meraki and Purple Hat Ansible: higher collectively
For companies with a number of department areas or advanced 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, presents a sturdy and constant answer to boost your IT operations.
Let’s discover a few of the prime Meraki use circumstances that might 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 lots of 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 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 shouldn’t 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 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 units. 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 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 Fact
Through the use of Ansible Automation Platform to automate department provisioning with Cisco Meraki, organizations can obtain a extra agile, dependable, and safe community infrastructure. This method is particularly useful for firms with a lot of geographically distributed areas, 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 areas can rapidly change into advanced. Sustaining consistency and making certain compliance with inside insurance policies and exterior laws is essential. 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 company’s settings and standing in opposition to a set of finest practices and thresholds – uncovering configurations that ought to 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 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 essential areas like firewall insurance policies. You resolve if you need Ansible Automation Platform to mechanically right any non-compliant configurations or create a service ticket with all the small print.
Through the use of 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 method enormously reduces danger 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 essential safety finest follow. In dynamic environments the place quite a few visitors 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 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 important safety activity, 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 activity, 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 useful 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:
- Speedy 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 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
- Verify Cisco Dwell U.S. Catalog, a number of occasions accessible
- Speaker: Demond Inexperienced, Specialist Options Architect, Purple Hat
Seamless Community Provisioning: A Meraki and Ansible Lab – LABMER-1100
- Verify Cisco Dwell U.S. Catalog, a number of occasions accessible
- 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 accessible from Cisco and Purple Hat:
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