This is a supplementary article for onboarding Elisity Virtual Edges and Virtual Edge Nodes that covers our Bulk Onboarding feature to make deployment scalable for large enterprises.
Bulk Onboarding Virtual Edges
Requirements
Due to our flexible deployment model, you should familiarize yourself with deployment requirements and the full deployment process for an individual Virtual Edge Node within each of our deployment methods prior to using our bulk onboarding feature. This feature allows you to provision your Virtual Edges and Nodes in Cloud Control Center all at once using an Excel data sheet rather than provisioning each Virtual Edge and Node Individually; additional steps are required outside of provisioning in Cloud Control Center. You can review our in-depth Virtual Edge Deployment Guides here:
Deploy Elisity Virtual Edge (Switch Hosted)
Deploy Elisity Virtual Edge VM (Hypervisor Hosted)
Bulk Onboarding Process
To begin, navigate to the Virtual Edge section in Cloud Control Center and click Onboard Virtual Edge. From here you will be presented with the option to add a single Virtual Edge or the option to add multiple Virtual Edges. Click "Add Multiple Virtual Edges" as seen in the screenshot below.
Next we need to download the Excel Template for bulk onboarding Virtual Edges. Click the link to download a sample excel file to use as a template.
Here is the template for data input about the Virtual Edges you wish to onboard. Fill out the required fields indicated by an asterisk, as well as any additional data you want to include.
After modifying the Excel file, save the file and upload to Cloud Control Center on the same screen where you downloaded the template.
If there are any errors in the Excel file, you will be notified of the error and which line the error is found on, as seen below.
If there are no errors, you will see a success message and a ZIP file will be downloaded to your workstation containing all the configuration files for each Virtual Edge.
From here, you need to finish the onboarding process for each Virtual Edge by following the corresponding guides, found here.
Deploy Elisity Virtual Edge (Switch Hosted)
Deploy Elisity Virtual Edge VM (Hypervisor Hosted)
Bulk Onboarding Virtual Edge Nodes
Requirements
Be sure that each switch you want to onboard as a Virtual Edge Node meets these requirements, and has the appropriate admin credentials setup.
NOTE:
- IOS-XE version 17.6.4 is the recommended code version
- All switches being onboarded must have their clocks synchronized with the Active Directory server so that attachment events are displayed accurately. You can use your own NTP server or a public one such as time.google.com.
- Catalyst series switches require a minimum of IPBase licensing to be onboarded as Virtual Edge Nodes.
CATALYST 9400 SPECIFIC NOTE:
- Catalyst 9410 series switch. If the Catalyst 9410 being onboarded is hosting a Virtual Edge using the Application Hosting functionality, it is mandatory to disable Elisity identity on GigabitEthernet4/0/48. See disabling identity on select switchports in this article for instructions.
On each switch, you should either have a user account with privilege 15 configured or TACACS login configured to provide privilege 15 level access. This is needed for the Virtual Edge to authenticate with the switch. Execute the following command under global configuration mode if a local account is being used and is not already configured:
switch(config)# username <username> privilege 15 secret 0 <password>
Add the following commands to your switch configuration if using TACACS
switch(config)# aaa authentication login HTTP_AUTH group <group name> local
switch(config)# ip http authentication aaa login-authentication HTTP_AUTH
Bulk Onboarding Process
To begin, go to the Virtual Edge dashboard in Cloud Control Center, select the Virtual Edge you would like to use as the parent for the Virtual Edge Nodes you are about to onboard, click the more options button, and click "Add Multiple Virtual Edge Nodes."
The following steps are nearly identical to onboarding Virtual Edges. We will start by downloading the example template for onboarding Virtual Edge Nodes. You can see the template below.
The required data fields are marked with an asterisk. The following chart provides details about each required field.
|
Switch Management IP |
This is the management IP of the switch you wish to onboard as a Virtual Edge Node for policy enforcement. This can be an IP as long as it is reachable by the previously deployed Virtual Edge container. This field is mandatory |
|
Switch Admin Username |
This is the admin username of the switch you wish to onboard as a Virtual Edge Node for policy enforcement. This can either be local or TACACS/RADIUS. Privilege 15 is required. This field is mandatory. |
|
Switch Admin Password |
This is the admin password of the switch you wish to onboard as a Virtual Edge Node for policy enforcement. This can either be local or TACACS/RADIUS. |
Fill out these fields in the Excel sheet as well as any additional data you want to include, save the file, and upload in the same place that you downloaded the Virtual Edge Node onboarding template. After successfully uploading your Excel file, you should begin to see Virtual Edge Nodes registered in Cloud Control Center. Some additional configuration may be required on each onboarded Node, you can find those details in our Onboarding Virtual Edge Nodes Article and our article for Onboarding Catalyst IE3400 Series Switches Article.