Deploying and Onboarding DC-vEdge1 Take a tour of this page

Verifying the existing lab setup

The vManage, vBond and vSmarts have been deployed and should be ready to accept control connections from vEdges and cEdges. We will start by verifying the existing setup.

1. Log in to vManage by clicking on the bookmark or navigating to https://192.168.0.6. Use the following credentials:

   Username	Password
   admin	admin

   

2. On logging in, you should see 2 vSmarts, 1 vBond and 1 vManage along the top row and 2 control planes should be up (naming convention might vary)

   

3. Open and log in to the vManage via the CLI - fire up Putty and double click the saved session for vManage or SSH to 192.168.0.6. Use the same credentials as the GUI.

   

4. Issue show control connections and you should see the vManage talking to the vSmarts and the vBond.

   

5. Additionally, you can log in to the CLI for the vBond via the saved link (and the same password as the vManage) and issue a show orchestrator connections

   

We see that the connections are up and this completes the verification activity.

Creating the DC-vEdge1 VM

Overview

We will be deploying a vEdge in our first site (the Data Center) via vCenter. Make note of the following information for this section. The IP Addressing will not be used for some of the Network Adapters until later. X is your POD number and is used only during vCenter related activities.

Deploying the VM on vCenter

1. Click on the bookmark for vCenter or navigate to the following URL: https://10.2.1.50/ui if connected to the GHI DC and 10.1.1.50/ui if connected to the SJC DC. Log in with the credentials provided for your POD.

   

2. Notice that no vEdges/cEdges have been deployed on the host you’ve accessed. This is expected.

   

3. Right click on the host and choose to Deploy OVF Template

   

4. Choose the Local file option and click on Choose files. Navigate to the SD-WAN images folder and select the file beginning with viptela-edge-. Click on Next.

   

5. Change the Virtual Machine name to DC-vEdge1-podX and click on Next (where X is your POD number, image below doesn’t have the suffix of podX)

   Note: We will only use the podX suffix over here to distinguish between different VMs in our Data Center. The rest of the guide will refer to this VM as DC-vEdge1

   

6. Select the host assigned to you (image shown as an example only) and click on Next

   Note: If the screen gets stuck over here at Validating then close Chrome and open the vCenter in Internet Explorer, going through the same steps. Deployment should go through. This is a known issue with Google Chrome.

   

7. Review the details shown and click on Next

   

8. Choose the Datastore and click on Next

   

9. Populate the VM Networks as per the image given below

   Important: Please make sure that these look exactly as shown below

   

10. Click on Finish to deploy your DC-vEdge1 VM

    

11. Once the VM is deployed, right click DC-vEdge1-podX and click Edit settings.

    

12. Choose to Add a new device (top right corner) and select Network Adapter to add one (since our deployed VM has only 4 Network Adapters but we will need 5 for our lab)

    

13. Click on the drop down next to New Network and click on Browse

    

14. Choose the Internet Network and click on OK. Make sure the Network Adapters match with the second image below and click on OK again
    Warning: The Network Adapter mapping might vary based on the version of vEdge being deployed. Sometimes, trial and error is the easiest way to figure out which Network Adapter maps to which interface on the vEdge

    

    

15. Click on the DC-vEdge1-podX VM and choose to power it on

    

Onboarding DC-vEdge1

Bootstrapping DC-vEdge1 (Initial Configuration)

Use the following information in this section (some of the information will be used later)

1. Console in to the DC-vEdge1 VM from vCenter (you should already be logged in from our last activity)

   

2. Wait for the VM to prompt you for the username and password and enter the credentials given below. If you get a message stating that they are incorrect, wait for 30 seconds and try again (since the processes need to initialize before you can log in)

   Username	Password
   admin	admin

   Note: From version 19.2, the password will need to be reset on initial login. For this lab, we will reset the password to admin.

   

3. Enter the configuration enumerated below. Unfortunately, this will need to be typed out since the console isn’t copy-paste friendly

   

    conf t
    system
     host-name DC-vEdge1
     system-ip 10.255.255.11
     site-id 1
     organization-name "swat-sdwanlab"
     vbond 100.100.100.3
     exit
    !
    vpn 0
     ip route 0.0.0.0/0 100.100.100.1
     interface ge0/0
      ip address 100.100.100.10/24
      no tunnel-interface
      no shutdown
      exit
      !
      exit
    !
    vpn 512
     ip route 0.0.0.0/0 192.168.0.1
     interface eth0
      ip address 192.168.0.10/24
      no shutdown
    !
    commit and-quit
   

   Tip: We are ensuring that the vEdge has basic IP Addressing and Routing to the Controllers. no tunnel-interface has been added under the ge0/0 interface in VPN 0 in order to prevent control connections from being established

4. Open Putty and double click the saved session for DC-vEdge1 (or SSH to 192.168.0.10)

   

5. Choose Yes to accept the certificate, if prompted

   

6. Login using the same credentials as Step 2.

   

Installing certificates and activating the vEdge

1. Type vshell and enter scp admin@192.168.0.6:ROOTCA.pem . to copy the ROOTCA.pem certificate to the vEdge. Commands can be copy-pasted now since we have SSH’d in to the vEdge (there is a dot at the end of the scp command). Enter yes when prompted and enter the password of vManage (i.e. admin). Exit when done with this step.

   

    vshell
    scp admin@192.168.0.6:ROOTCA.pem .
   

   Note: This is NOT how you would normally install certificates over to your devices. In a lab, this manual method works fine but for production environments, the other options are definitely preferred (like Cisco PKI)

2. Go to the vManage GUI (https://192.168.0.6) and log in, if logged out. Navigate to Configuration => Devices (from the left-hand side, click on the cog wheel to access the configuration options)

   

3. Choose any vEdge Cloud device (it doesn’t matter which one you pick, as long as it is a vEdge Cloud) and click on the three dots at the extreme right-hand side. Choose Generate Bootstrap Configuration

   

4. Select Cloud-Init and uncheck Include Default Root Certificate. Click on OK

   

5. Make note of the UUID and the OTP values. These will be required to activate the vEdge. It’s best to copy the string and place it in notepad, since we will need to use it in our SSH session to the DC-vEdge1 device. Alternatively, leave this popup open and we can come back to it when required
   Important: The UUID and OTP/Token are super important for vEdge Cloud or cEdge CSRs. Physical devices don’t have a token associated with them and are uniquely identified by their serial number

   

6. Go back to the Putty session for DC-vEdge1 and enter request root-cert-chain install /home/admin/ROOTCA.pemto install the root cert chain. It should install successfully

   

    request root-cert-chain install /home/admin/ROOTCA.pem
   

7. Enter tunnel-interface, encapsulation ipsec and allow-service all under interface ge0/0 to bring up the tunnel Interface. Make sure to commit and-quit in order to write the configuration change

   

    config t
    vpn 0
    interface ge0/0
     tunnel-interface
     encapsulation ipsec
     allow-service all
     exit
     !
     commit and-quit
   

   This ensures that our vEdge is now able to establish control connections with the vManage and vSmarts via the vBond. However, these connections will not be fully formed till we don’t activate the vEdge itself

8. Issue the request vedge-cloud activate chassis-number (Enter your UUID) token (Enter the OTP)command. Replace the (Enter your UUID) and (Enter your OTP) fields with the UUID and OTP generated in Step 5 (image below is an example, UUID and OTP may not match).

   

    request vedge-cloud activate chassis-number (Enter your UUID) token (Enter the OTP)
   

   This completes the Onboarding section for DC-vEdge1

Onboarding Verification

1. Wait for a couple of minutes and run show control connections in the DC-vEdge1 CLI. We should see that the vEdge has been able to establish a DTLS tunnel with the vManage and the vSmarts. If you don’t see any output, wait for a couple of minutes and run the command again

   

    show control connections
   

   Tip: You can also issue show control connections-history in the event of failures to find out why is the connection not working as expected. A few helpful commands are show certificate installed, show certificate root-ca-cert, show control local-properties and show certificate validity. Most of these commands give us details about the status of certificates on the device and are helpful in ascertaining the root cause of failure when control connections aren’t getting established.

2. On the vManage GUI, navigate to Monitor => Network Devices (the computer icon on the left-hand side)

   

3. DC-vEdge1 should show up in the list of devices

   

4. Click on DC-vEdge1 and navigate to Troubleshooting => Control Connections(Live view). You should see the vEdge successfully connected to 2 vSmarts and 1 vManage

   

This completes the verification activity.

Helpful debugs and logs

1. On the CLI for DC-vEdge1, issue debug vdaemon all followed by clear control connections. This will tear down all the control connections and the vEdge will rebuilt the DTLS tunnels. We can capture the logs to see the process associated with the DTLS tunnels being built

   

    debug vdaemon all
    clear control connections
   

2. Wait for a couple of minutes and go to vshell. Type cat /var/log/tmplog/vdebug to view the contents of the log file

   

3. Given below are a couple of sample outputs

   

   

   Use no debug vdaemon all to disable the debug

This completes our onboarding activity for DC-vEdge1.