Sensor Agents 24.09 Release Notes

Overview

Cisco is pleased to announce release 24.09 of Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Agents.

What's New

Release 24.09 of the Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Agent contains the following new features and functions:

• Agent actuate now supports separate reflector settings per namespace via API. If configuring via GUI then only one reflector per type can be defined (twampv4 / twampv6 / echov4 / echov6 / throughputv4 / throughputv6)
• Support for different certificate policies have been added through the startup variable AGENT_CA_TRUST_BUNDLE - see Agent Installation - CA Trust Bundles for a list of the available modes
• Base Alpine image updated to 3.20.1 for latest security patches

Release Components

Agent Characteristics and Capabilities

• *) A vCPU is considered as a thread on standard x86 CPU, running typically at 2.2 to 2.4GHz.
• **) Typical value on system supporting kernel timestamps on receive
• ***) Since transfer agent executes tests in sequence, care needs to be taken to not add more sessions than can be finished within the session repeat interval. Example: if 60s repeat interval is used, and 10 sessions each with max execution time of 5s are created, then (5 * 10) 50s is the max execution time for all tests, and this fits within the 60s repeat interval. See transfer agent configuration for more details.

• Max use count refers to the number of sessions per agent instance, multiple agents can be deployed on the same host to increase session count.
• CPU usage for actuate is shown as a range depending on load. Highest load is 5000 pps (for example 500 sessions of 10 pps each).
• Paris, in the Capability column, represents the current algorithm for trace route.

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Upgrade Paths

Sensor Agents use a destroy-redeploy model common for container applications. This means that an agent is never upgraded, it is simply replaced. In order to support this mode of operation, only the absolute minimum of configuration parameters are stored with the agent, the rest being kept in the orchestration system and downloaded to the agent at startup. The agent 24.09 is backwards compatible with the docker-compose configuration of all versions back to 21.12, which means the agent can be updated by changing the release version and name in the docker compose file. Note that the release name for docker pull was shortened in release 22.11.

See current docker pull strings for latest release here: Agent Installation Guidelines

Agent session configuration in the orchestration is backwards compatible back to 22.11, so no session or test configuration changes are required when upgrading agents or Analytics to 24.09.

Deployment Considerations

The sensor: agents deploy as containers on x86_64 and arm64 environments. Thus, a container environment is required and we recommend docker 23.0.6 or later.