RansNet Docs - Device Onboarding

Device Onboarding (to Orchestrator)

Device onboarding involves importing the device into mfusion orchestrator, so that you can start configuring SD-WAN features and all other settings to meet your connectivity and security requirements. For 3rd-party device monitoring, this step is not necessary.

We suggest plot out the overall network map clearly, so you know exactly what you intend to achieve. You can use the mfusion map facility to draw the map.

Terminologies

Before we begin, it's important to understand some basic terminologies and principles used by mfusion.

SD-WAN Device Types

Functionally, there're two types of devices - Gateway and Branch.

The gateway devices are the CMG/HSG series that function as central SD-WAN gateway (and/or captive portal gateway). The SD-WAN gateways are usually located at customer HQ/DC network or cloud hosting, where the central applications reside (eg. VM/AWS/AZure etc). The gateways terminate VPN tunnels from branch routers and handle route exchanges for the entire SD-WAN network. They're attached with Template_mbox duirng provisioning step.
The branch devices are the remote routers are each location. These are usually the branch series (UA/HSA/XE/UAP). Please note CMG/HSG can also be used as branch device, for various reasons (eg. for big branch networks with high speed and large amount of users); but the branch series can't be used as gateway devices.

GUI vs CLI Configuration

RansNet devices can be configured either through mfusion orchestrator (recommended) or through CLI. It's important to understand the differences.

mfusion orchestrator stores GUI configuration into a device topology database for each device, and compile it into CLI configurations commands which are pulled down by the device to apply the settings locally.
If you configure over CLI (via console or SSH), the CLI configs are not automatically synced to mfusion (you can use the "Import CLI Config" function to manually do it later).

Onboard Devices

Go to "ORCHESTRATOR > Configuration > Gateway Devices" submenu. Click on "New Gateway", select the device that will be used and attach to a topology template.

"Empty" topology template means mfusion will not prefill any GUI settings for this device.
"Default" topology matches with your device default CLI configs.
"From host ..." allows you to copy an existing device GUI setting (of similar configuration), so that you simply need to make simple changes (some LAN IP) and "resync" to the router, in order to reduce the configuration efforts.

Go to "ORCHESTRATOR > Configuration > Branch Devices" submenu. Click on "New Branch" to onboard branch devices.

Import CLI Config

Your device may already have some existing default or bootstrap CLI configuration, and you want to merge them into your GUI setting. You can use the "Import CLI Config" feature.

However, if you just want to start from a clean/zero config (eg. you select the "Empty" template). Do not perform this step. Configure GUI settings and "Resync Config" to overwrite all existing CLI configs.

To import CLI config, if the device is already properly bootstrapped and online, you can click on the device MAC address (under the gateway column), then under device editing menu, click on "Import CLI Config" button on the upper right corner.

After reviewing the differences (if CLI is different from your device GUI setting), Accept the ones you need, and "Confirm to Import".

Resync Config

At this stage, before you start to make your configuration changes, you may optionally run a "Resync Config" to make sure GUI configuration is fully synced to CLI.

NOTE: This action will overall all existing CLI with GUI setting and force reboot of the device.

A few things to check before resync:

If you selected "Copy from host ..." to inherit settings from existing host during onboarding, you will usually need to change some interface setting (eg. LAN interface setting) and hostname etc.
If you selected "Empty" template during onboarding, you must minimally configure WAN IP and routing first to make sure the device can get online and reach to mfusion after reboot.
If have important bootstrap CLI config (eg. for on-premise mfusion deployment, the device must configure "ip host portal.ransnet.com ..." to point to your private mfusion IP), you must import the CLI config first to merge that setting into GUI, to ensure the device can still reach your mfusion after reboot.

Under device editing menu, click on "Resync Config" button on the down-drop menu.

Zero Touch Provisioning

Before the device is online or deployed, you can onboard it to mfusion, prepare the necessary configurations and resync config to the device.

Once the device is online (eg. properly bootstrapped), it will auto pull its config, reboot and start working as per your configuration.

Report abuse