Cisco revamps key DevNet sandboxes

Cisco has expanded its DevNet sandbox environments to make it easier for network professionals to test and develop applications for key enterprise networking technologies.

Specifically, there are three new or revamped sandboxes related to Cisco’s Catalyst Center, network automation software, and Meraki product suites that Cisco says will support more users and simply use of the environments.

Sandboxes offer virtual lab environments that members of the DevNet developer community can access to test different configurations, build simulations and implement prototypes without affecting their production networks. DevNet sandboxes and the community also help users learn new skills and put them into practice.

Greater scalability for Catalyst Center sandboxes

One upgraded sandbox involves Catalyst Center, previously known as DNA Center. Catalyst Center is a network management suite that operates on Cisco hardware or as a virtual package. It automates network operations and provisioning and can predict or spot protentional network problems to speed problem resolution, according to Cisco. 

The option to run Catalyst Center as a virtual machine in AWS or on premise in a VMware virtual environment has made it much easier to deploy Catalyst Center instances in virtual lab environments, according to Adrian Iliesiu, a technical leader with Cisco DevNet.

“This allows us to scale the Catalyst Center sandboxes to much higher numbers,” Iliesiu wrote in a blog post about the new sandboxes. “For the always on Catalyst Center sandboxes, we can now accommodate 100 users at the same time, while for the reservable instances we went from 4 to 25 available instances.”

“The reservable instances can be all yours for up to 4 days with the small caveat that it takes about 60 minutes to have all the components of the sandbox come online. They are currently running version 2.3.7.4 of Catalyst Center and there is also a Cisco ISE server available if you want to deploy [software defined access] fabrics.”

New CI/CD pipeline sandbox

One new sandbox from Cisco is dedicated to building and testing automation software using continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

“I have been advocating for using CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation and programmability for a while,” wrote Iliesiu, who ran a workshop on the topic at Ansible Fest in Denver earlier this year.

During the workshop, attendees followed a guide on how to use GitLab together with Ansible, Cisco pyATS, Cisco CML and Cisco NX-OS to build a functional CI/CD pipeline for infrastructure automation, Iliesiu stated. The sandbox Cisco used for that event is now publicly available in the DevNet sandbox catalog together with the lab that describes how to build and use these pipelines.

“We have up to 15 of these sandboxes available at all times for up to 5 days per reservation. Go ahead and give them a try and witness the magic of using network automation with CI/CD pipelines,” Iliesiu wrote.

Meraki sandboxes rebuilt

Cisco’s Meraki sandboxes have been rebuilt from scratch to boost scalability, according to Lliesiu.

“Similar to the Catalyst Center sandboxes of the old, we were limited by hardware on how many Meraki sandboxes we could make available to our community. That has completely changed and now the new Meraki sandboxes are entirely virtual,” Lliesiu wrote. “We have serial numbers available for virtual Meraki devices that we can scale to much larger numbers.”

With this sandbox, users gain access to virtual Meraki MX security devices, MS Ethernet switches and MR wireless access points to test enterprise developments.

Cisco will be announcing more new DevNet sandboxes very soon, Iliesiu added.

“I don’t want to spoil too much those announcements, but let’s just say that if you were looking to test Catalyst 9000 hardware switches and didn’t have access to a lab environment, that will change very soon,” Iliesiu wrote.   

Cisco DevNet offers a variety of sandbox environments for its networking, data center IoT, network management, and collaboration suites. Its sandbox catalog can be accessed here.

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