Provisioning for Automation

Modern declarative configuration tools like Ansible, Salt, Nornir, and others make deploying and managing configuration on network hardware much more low touch than previously, however there is still more work required to get devices ready for management.

Credentials need to be set up, system inventories need to be populated, and connectivity to the service doing the configuration management provided.

Historically, this initial provisioning was performed manually via the normal device configuration interfaces (Web Management Console, Serial Console, SSH/Telnet), and the automation system inventory updated. However with the rapid pace of network deployment, pre-staging devices like this before installation, or at installation time costs time, and manual processes introduce points for mistakes to occur. Automated Provisioning provides a solution to this problem.

Most modern network devices will perform Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), where they will attempt to retrieve a network configuration from a URL provided inside a DHCP option.

DHCP servers can be configured to provide different DHCP options to different device types and hosts, allowing initial configurations to be tailored to the devices in question.

Once devices have accepted their initial configuration, the device performing to the provision can update the inventory in the automation system to mark the device as ready for further provisioning.

Gearlinx NR devices provide the building blocks for this provisioning work flow, with their built-in DHCP server, secure file storage, support for file serving via TFTP/SFTP and HTTPS, and their integrated 4G LTE modems, to provide connectivity back to the rest of the network before the primary in-band link has been configured. The easy support for containers allows custom code to be deployed to the NR for any further interactions with automation systems or infrastructure.

Gearlinx ZERO makes this scalable, by allowing easy deployment and configuration of NR devices to greenfields sites, meaning that provisioning services will be in place at the beginning of deployments.