Legacy Orchestrator

Overview

The Legacy orchestrator (formally Accedian Skylight orchestrator) is Cisco’s element and service management system. From this centralized platform, you will be able to view and manage the entire suite of Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance components on your network including:

• Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors (GT, LT, LX, F100 and F25)
• Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Control
• Full range of Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Modules (all Assurance Sensor Module models and Assurance Sensor SFP models)
• Provider Connectivity Assurance, a cloud-native analysis and visualization application (available as SaaS).

Legacy orchestrator is built around a robust task automation engine and proven opensource components. Legacy orchestrator has a secure web-based user interface (shown below).

From the Legacy orchestrator web interface, you can perform the following tasks:

• View and discover complete inventory of devices
• Automatically commission devices upon discovery
• Perform bulk configuration and backups of large networks
• Create and manage performance measurement sessions (TWAMP, Echo, Ethernet OAM and 2xOneWay)
• Monitor device faults
• Monitor network performance thresholds and issue alarms based on thresholds
• Configure and report on network performance test suites
• Collect and group network performance statistics over a northbound interface.

From initial install of Provider Connectivity Assurance devices, Legacy orchestrator simplifies, secures and accelerates Ethernet service validation and performance monitoring. The benefits of Legacy orchestrator include:

• Centralized view of the entire network
• Performance session management
• Northbound interface (REST API)
• Centralized SAT
• Scalability - Legacy orchestrator can manage hundreds of thousands of endpoints.

Instant Provisioning

By extending the Plug & Go™ instant provisioning system, Legacy orchestrator reduces operational efforts to an absolute minimum. New units go from the box to being managed in minutes.

1. Device is installed on the network and powered on.
2. Device receives periodic beacon from another beaconing device and configures its
3. management channel from the beacon information.
4. Device advertises itself to the Inventory Tracking device.
5. Legacy orchestrator monitors the Inventory Tracking device and adds the new device to its list of devices.
6. Legacy orchestrator establishes communication.
7. Device is ready to be managed.

Network-Wide Backups and Upgrades

Legacy orchestrator automates network-wide backup of configuration data, as well as archiving and export. Legacy orchestrator's task automation engine can process hundreds of Provider Connectivity Assurance devices in parallel. Resulting configuration files can either be stored on the Legacy orchestrator server or on an external server, depending on your particular needs. Legacy orchestrator supports firmware upgrades for individual units. Multi-threaded batch processing and status tracking allow full inventory upgrades to be performed and verified within short maintenance windows.

Legacy orchestrator is Cisco’s Element and Service Management System. Legacy orchestrator is server software that can be installed on a virtual machine or Docker container running on a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) server.

From Legacy orchestrator, you can manage and collect performance data from your entire Provider Connectivity Assurance device monitoring solution including:

• Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensors (GT, LT, LX, F100 and F25)

• Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Control

• Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Modules

The performance data can be forwarded to Provider Connectivity Assurance (or other systems) for visualization and analysis.

Core Functionality

The core functionality of Legacy orchestrator includes:

• Configuration of Provider Connectivity Assurance devices (Assurance Sensor Control and Assurance Sensor Modules)

• Management of Provider Connectivity Assurance device firmware

• Device discovery and inventory

• Service Activation Testing (SAT) using Y.1564 and RFC-2544

• Creation and management of performance sessions that measure key metrics of network services

• Collection of performance data and distribution to Provider Connectivity Assurance (and other systems) for visualization and analysis.

Connectivity

Connectivity between Legacy orchestrator appliances, Provider Connectivity Assurance devices and end-user browsers must be established over a Data Communications Network (DCN).

Legacy orchestrator communicates with Provider Connectivity Assurance devices over the DCN in order to discover devices, collect performance data, and perform service activation testing.

Similarly, end users must be able to access the Legacy orchestrator web interface from their desktop or laptop computers. This communication also occurs over the DCN.

The DCN must meet the following basic requirements:

• Legacy orchestrator appliances must be assigned an IPv4 address

• For single Machine deployments, IP routes must be in place from the Legacy orchestrator Machine to all Provider Connectivity Assurance devices

• IP routes must be in place from the Legacy orchestrator Machine to all end-user stations/computers.

The protocols and UDP/TCP ports used by Legacy orchestrator are detailed in Important Considerations.

User Interfaces

Legacy orchestrator has two user interfaces:

• A browser-based web interface

You access it from a web browser. All you need is the Machine IP address and the username and password for a valid Legacy orchestrator user account. The web interface is meant for regular daily operations.

• A console-based interface

A software module called the Machine Monitor provides a set of CLI commands that are used to perform system administration tasks for Legacy orchestrator.

The commands are documented in detail in the Machine Monitor Command Reference.

Detailed procedures for using the commands to perform system administration tasks are explained in Administrative Operations as well as and Docker-Specific Administrative Operations for Docker.

The console interface is used to perform the following tasks:

• Provide a hostname, an IP address and a subnet (expressed as a CIDR value)
• Provide a default gateway
• Set the date and time
• Define the DNS servers
• Configure an NTP client.

Some system recovery tasks can also be executed from the console interface, including:

• Reboot the server
• Restore a backup
• Reset the system to factory defaults.