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Importing Devicesđź”—

System recognition of devices can be achieved in bulk through utilization of a system initialization file, or alternatively, configured manually within the Verity GUI.

Device Recognition Using a System Initialization Fileđź”—

The ZTP process relies on a CSV data file that describes the network components in a tabulated format. During installation, you will need to open this file in Excel (or another editor) and manually enter additional information into the designated fields. This is a list of the needed information:

  • Service Tag values of all switches
  • The hostname of the SDLC created during the VM installation process
  • The designation of a management switch to function as your management Top of Rack (TOR) switch and the chosen uplink port you plan to use
  • All Leaf Pair Names

After you update the file with the additional information, you import it by performing the following steps.

  1. Select the Import/Export workbench window.
  2. Select Import.
  3. Choose the CSV file built for the system. (Note: the file name must start with the string “FDC" and cannot have hyphen or slash characters in the name.)
  4. After importing the file, the system automatically creates the required provisioning objects for the system bringup.

Device Management Protocol

The default protocol used for the device management in the automatically created Device Controller is "gnmi." Some switch models only support SNMP, CLI or other protocols. Please confirm with the hardware vendor's documentation to ensure that gnmi is supported for the models you are using.

  1. Make sure that that the system read only mode is disabled (i.e., icon with white background vs. beige background).

Physical Cable Connectionsđź”—

Connect Management Switch(es)đź”—

The ZTP process sets the new switch up based on the contents of the Device Controller object that was created by the FDC file import. As a default, the first 32 ports are configured to be possible uplinks.

ZTP requires two connections simultaneously from the switch. One of the first 32 switch ports is designated to be the uplink connection to the WAN/Orchestration platform. The “out of band port” or “Management Port” of the switch is used to manage ONIE download and the ZTP process. Accommodations must be provided to allow the first switch (TOR) to go through the ZTP process. Once the TOR is up and running, connections for subsequent switches are made through the TOR. The management connections in the switching fabric are all untagged.

As shown in the diagram above, the management switches require two connections towards the installed applications to successfully complete the ZTP process. One connection is for the Management Switch “out of band management port” and the other connection is on a switched port. This switched port should be designated in the imported FDC CSV file only for the Management TOR switch. After connecting the device, the ZTP process will begin.

The next step is to “power up” the Device Controllers and set them to “Read write” mode. This is done through the system reports. Mouse over the top right section of the GUI to expand the Report menu and select the “Device Controllers” report.

  1. Select all controllers.
  2. Select the Actions button to turn Read only mode off and to Power Up the controllers.
  3. Power up the switch. The ONIE boot load and ZTP process can take 10 to 20 minutes to complete. Upon successful completion and established communications with the controller, the management switch status transitions to green in the system GUI. This means the device is now provisioned and the management switch is operational as shown in this example.

Remaining Management switchesđź”—

On the management TOR switch, physically remove the cable from the out of band management port. The same process with two cables is required for all management switches cascaded from the Management TOR

Connect Spine and Leaf Switchesđź”—

For spine and leaf switches, only the out of band management port is used.

  1. Connect all other switches (super spine, spine, leaf) to their respective management switches. These switches remain connected to the management switch moving forward.
  2. Connect the pairs of leaf switches together using any two switch ports you choose.
  3. Connect the leaf switches to the spines and the spines to the super spines using any switchport.
  4. Power up the switches.

The GUI Network View within the Verity dashboard gradually updates as you complete each step and Verity identifies each switch and automatically configures the network underlay. As you perform the process the devices change color depending on their state.

  • Yellow: Switchpoint is Preprovisioned
  • Teal: Device is physically recognized, associated to the Switchpoint, and being registered
  • Green: Device is in provisioning process
  • White: Device provisioning is complete and is ready for use

Congratulations

You have now successfully installed Verity and activated the underlay network.