About Skylight Element Discovery

Skylight orchestrator's Discovery Trigger feature extends the Accedian Plug & Go™ instant provisioning system. The combination of these two features reduces the operational effort required to install new devices to a minimum. New devices go from the box to being managed in minutes.

Here are the components involved in the discovery process:

• Elements with Plug & Go: Most Accedian Skylight elements are equipped for Plug & Go provisioning. A field technician only needs to install a unit and power it up. The unit can then be provisioned automatically by a process involving beaconer and inventory elements.
• Beaconer element: Skylight elements can be configured to send out beacon frames. The beaconer gives new elements enough information to configure their own management channel and advertise their presence on the network. A beaconer is optional.
• Inventory-tracking elements: Skylight elements can also be configured as inventory-tracking elements. An inventory-tracking element detects new elements advertising themselves and adds them to its inventory. A single element can be configured as a beaconer and as an inventory-tracker.
• Skylight orchestrator: The Discovery Trigger feature allows Skylight orchestrator to discover new elements (by polling inventory-tracking elements) and execute configuration jobs or flow profile on the discovered elements.

Plug & Go Instant Provisioning

Here is how a new Skylight element is installed on the network and configures its connection to the network:

1. New Skylight element is installed on the network and powered on.

2. An IP address is assigned to the Skylight element, which can be done in various ways:

• Skylight element receives beacon frame from beaconer and configures its own management channel from the beacon information.
• Field technician configures the IP address manually.

3. Skylight element advertises its presence on the network.

4. Inventory-tracking Skylight element receives advertisement frame and adds new Skylight element to its inventory.

Discovery Trigger Workflow

This section describes the Discovery Trigger workflow: how to set it up in Skylight orchestrator and how it triggers execution of configuration jobs and flow profiles on discovered elements.

1. Network administrator prepares for installation of new Skylight elements as follows:

• (Optional, if beaconing will be used) Ensures that at least one Skylight element on the network is enabled as a beaconer. Done on the Skylight element itself.
• Ensures that one or more managed elements are enabled for inventory- tracking (done on the elements themselves) and for inventory- polling (done in Skylight orchestrator).
• Ensures that an NE Credential (that will allow Skylight orchestrator to log in on new Skylight elements) is available in Skylight orchestrator.

• With configuration jobs:
• Prepares one or more ME Reference dataset files that list the new Skylight elements that will be installed on the network.
• Prepares one or more configuration jobs that define how to configure the elements listed in the ME Reference file(s).
• Sets up the Discovery Trigger to execute the configuration job(s) previously prepared.

• With flow profiles:
• Prepares one or more configuration jobs that define how to configure the elements listed in the ME Reference file(s)
• Prepares one or more Configuration flow templates that define Device token and Flow tokens.
• Prepares one Flow token dataset files that list the value of the token that define how to configure in the Configuration flow templates.
• Prepares one Flow profile that defines a description for flow tokens that define how to configure in the Configuration flow templates.
• Sets up the Discovery Trigger to execute the previously prepared Flow profile(s).

2. Field technician installs the new Skylight elements and powers them on. If the new elements are enabled for Plug & Go, they will configure their own IP address based on information received from beaconer element.

3. Alternatively, the technician may perform some configuration directly on the Skylight elements, such as configuring the management IP address.

4. The newly installed elements advertise their presence on the network.

5. An inventory-tracking element detects the new elements on the network and adds them to its inventory.

6. Skylight orchestrator:

• Polls inventory- tracking elements and adds elements in their inventory to the Unmanaged list.
• Scans the Unmanaged list periodically (every five minutes) to identify any elements whose properties (serial number or name or IP address or subnet) match an element listed in an ME Reference file associated with a configuration job or flow profile that is selected in the Discovery Trigger.
• Runs the configuration job(s) or flow profile on elements matching the conditions defined in the ME Reference file for the particular job.

Operational Considerations

The following operational considerations apply to the Discovery Trigger:

• A maximum of 20 devices can be processed per scan of the Unmanaged list.
• If more than 20 devices are in an Unmanaged state, only the first 20 are processed.
• The remaining elements will be processed during subsequent scans.
• In order to move a device to the Managed state, Skylight orchestrator must first be able to establish an SSH connection to the device and log in.
• If connectivity is established, the device is moved to the Managed list and execution of the configuration job begins.
• If connectivity cannot be established, the element is left in the Unmanaged list and will be retried at the next scan.
• Skylight orchestrator retains a history of the devices that were scanned and moved to the Managed list by the Discovery Trigger.
• If a device has already been processed by the Discovery Trigger, it will not be processed a second time.
• The only way to remove the device from the history (so it can be rediscovered and reconfigured if necessary) is to delete the device from Skylight orchestrator completely.

• If no matching elements are found, the executor result will be empty. Only one empty executor result (the most recent) is stored in the history.
• If no matching elements are found, the flow profile result will be empty. Only one empty flow profile result (the most recent) is stored in the history.
• Errors may prevent the configuration job from executing successfully.
• In the event of a failure, the device will remain in the Managed list.
• The status for the configuration job in the Discovery Trigger page will be Completed with errors.

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