Step 1: Lab Environment Requirements

This article will help ensure you have the right lab environment, tools, and concepts to start ingesting telemetry for IOS XR or IOS XE devices.

The following topics are covered:

• Environment Requirements
• Key Concepts and Definitions

Environment Requirements

To build and test your solution, you need administrative access to a Provider Connectivity Assurance (formerly Accedian Skylight analytics) lab environment and Cisco IOS XR or IOS XE routers.

You will configure and deploy your Telemetry Collector(s) and Sensor Collector(s) into the environment where the routers reside.

Provider Connectivity Assurance platform - Cloud Deployment

• User interface where users can see telemetry data from IOS router devices
• Includes the platform SDK APIs, including the API for building a Sensor Collector and Telemetry Collector components
• Non-Production (lab) environment must always be used when integrating new telemetry data sources to avoid disruption to Production systems

Sensor Collector - Deployed in Lab Environment

• Sensor Collector component that collects metrics and data from Telemetry Collectors
• Converts OpenMetrics from Telemetry Collector to a Provider Connectivity Assurance-compliant format and transfers it to the Provider Connectivity Assurance deployment in the cloud
• Deployed instance must have access to Provider Connectivity Assurance in the cloud and to the Telemetry Collector

Telemetry Collector - Deployed in Lab Environment

• Receives MDT data from IOS Routers using a default set of sensor paths
• Converts parsed data into OpenMetrics format and transfers it to the configured Sensor Collector instance
• Deployed instance must be accessible by the router via gNMI dial-out

IOS XR and/or IOS XE Router

• MDT-enabled routers
• Configured with Destination configuration, Sensor Path configuration, and Subscription Group for the environment
• IOS- XR devices running IPSLA (either ICMP Echo or UDP Jitter) or Y.1731 performance tests if that service assurance data is desired for ingestion to Provider Connectivity Assurance
• IOS-XE devices report device environmental (CPU, Memory) and Interface usage metrics without any additional provisioning required
• Defining service policies for services and virtual circuits if they require utilization monitoring in Provider Connectivity Assurance

Provider Connectivity Assurance Concepts and Definitions

MDT:

Model Driven Telemetry

YANG Model:

Tree-like data structure containing hierarchically structured data; IOS XR MDT data is stored and outputted as a YANG model format

Sensor Path:

Describes a YANG path or subset of data defined in a YANG Model and functions like a map to the desired data; a sensor path can be specified to end at any level of the hierarchical data.

Sessions and Objects:

A Session is a logical grouping of metrics that appear in the Inventory in Provider Connectivity Assurance.

Sessions can represent a synthetic test (TWAMP, Y.1731) or a telemetry entity being monitored (CPU, Memory, Interface).

Objects and Sessions refer to the same concept and can be used interchangeably.

Sessions require software licenses.

Each Session from telemetry sources requires one SKY-TELEM license.

Each Session from Assurance Sensors requires one SKY-TEST license.

Monitored Object Name:

The name of an object type instance is configurable and referred to as the Monitored Object Name.

Meaningful Monitored Object Names clearly indicate the entity being monitored, making it easier for customers to locate information.

The Monitored Object Name values must contain alphanumeric (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), “_” (underscore), “-” (dash), “.” (dot) and “/” (slash) characters.

The format for the Monitored Object Name in our Telemetry Collector solution is < source >_< Data identifier> where ‘Data identifier’ is specific to each object type based on how unique entities are represented.

Monitored Object ID:

A Monitored Object ID is a unique system identifier and is used to create the inventory in Provider Connectivity Assurance.

Each object in an inventory has a unique Monitored Object ID.

By default, the Telemetry Collector sets the Monitored Object ID and Monitored Object Name to the same value (i.e. < source >_< Data identifier> ).