Cisco: ACI PowerPack Release Notes, version 111

Version 111 of the Cisco: ACI PowerPack includes a security update.

  • Minimum Required SL1 Version: 10.1.0

NOTE: For users on Military Unique Deployment (MUD) systems, the PowerPack will not work on a system older than 10.1.0.

Before You Install or Upgrade

Ensure that you are running version 10.1.0 or later of SL1 before installing "Cisco: ACI" PowerPack version 111.

For details on upgrading SL1, see the relevant SL1 Platform Release Notes.

Before you upgrade to this version, you must disable or delete the "Discovery" snippet in the "Cisco: ACI Device Reclassification" Dynamic Application.

To disable the "Discovery" snippet:

  1. Go to the Dynamic Applications Manager page (System > Manage > Applications).
  2. Locate the "Cisco: ACI Device Reclassification" Dynamic Application and click its wrench icon ().
  3. In the Snippets tab, click the wrench icon () for the "Discovery" snippet.
  4. In the Active State drop-down, select Disabled.
  5. Click the Save button.

To delete the "Discovery" snippet:

  1. Go to the Dynamic Applications Manager page (System > Manage > Applications).
  2. Locate the "Cisco: ACI Device Reclassification" Dynamic Application and click its wrench icon ().
  3. In the Snippets tab, locate the "Discovery" snippet and click the bomb icon () next to it.
  4. Click OK when asked if you are sure you want to delete the snippet.
  5. Click the Save button.

Installing the PowerPack

To install version 111 of the Cisco: ACI PowerPack, perform the following steps:

To install this PowerPack:

  1. Familiarize yourself with the Known Issues for this release.
  2. See the Before You Install or Upgrade section. If you have not done so already, upgrade your system to the 10.1.0 or later release.
  3. Download the "Cisco: ACI" version 111PowerPack from the Support Site to a local computer.
  4. Go to the PowerPack Manager page (System > Manage > PowerPacks). Click the Actions menu and choose Import PowerPack. When prompted, import "Cisco: ACI" version 111.
  5. Click the Install button. For details on installing PowerPacks, see the chapter on Installing a PowerPack in the PowerPacks manual.

For more information about using the PowerPack, see the Monitoring Cisco: ACI manual.

Upgrading the PowerPack

To upgrade from a previous version of the PowerPack, perform the following steps:

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack will overwrite all content in that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent the new version of the PowerPack from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields.

If you are currently using the Dynamic Applications in this PowerPack to monitor devices, collection errors might occur for one or two polling cycles during the installation of a new version. To prevent collection errors during an upgrade, you can optionally disable collection for monitored devices before performing the following steps and re-enable collection after the upgrade.

  1. Familiarize yourself with the Known Issues for this release.
  2. See the Before You Install or Upgrade section. If you have not done so already, upgrade your system to 10.1.0 or a later release.
  3. Download "Cisco: ACI" version 111 from the Support Site to a local computer.
  4. Determine the best HTTP timeout value and apply it to the current ACI SOAP/XML credential in the Timeout (seconds) field. We recommend a timeout value of 5 seconds.

NOTE: Expect a gap in data collection for a 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of your environment.

NOTE: Expect to see an import error come up once the new version of the PowerPack is installed. This error should disappear within one to two poll intervals.

  1. Go to the PowerPack Manager page (System > Manage > PowerPacks). Click the Actions menu and choose Import PowerPack. When prompted, import "Cisco: ACI" version 111.
  2. After importing the PowerPack, you will be prompted to install the PowerPack. Click the Install button to install the PowerPack.
  3. If you have a multi-collector environment, perform a manual sync in the Appliance Manager page (System > Settings > Appliances).
  4. Align the "Cisco: ACI PP Upgrade Tasks" Dynamic Application to the virtual root device and wait until an event is triggered by that Dynamic Application. The run book action triggered by this event will align the "Cisco: ACI APIC Communications Manager" and the "Cisco: ACI API Performance Metrics" Dynamic Applications to all tenants. For large deployments, it will process 25 tenants at a time.
  1. Go to the Dynamic Applications Manager page (System > Manage > Applications) and find the "Cisco: ACI APIC Communications Manager" and the "Cisco: ACI API Performance Metrics" Dynamic Applications. Verify that the number of subscribers to these Dynamic Applications matches the number of tenants in your system.
  2. Verify that data collection is occurring and that no device is appearing as unavailable.
  3. Un-align the "Cisco: ACI PP Upgrade Tasks" Dynamic Application.
  4. See the manual Monitoring Cisco ACI for instructions on using the PowerPack.

Features

This release includes the following features:

  • Dynamic Applications that discover and collect data from Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) devices
  • Event Policies that are triggered when Cisco ACI devices meet certain status criteria
  • Device Classes for each type of Cisco ACI device monitored
  • Sample credentials for discovering Cisco ACI devices
  • Device Dashboards that display information about Cisco ACI devices
  • Run Book Actions that automate some aspects of the device discovery and creation process
  • ScienceLogic Libraries that are utilized by this PowerPack:
  • content
  • silo_aci
  • silo_apps
  • silo_vmware
  • vmware

Enhancements and Issues Addressed

The following enhancements and addressed issues are included in version 111 of the "Cisco: ACI" PowerPack:

  • Snippet logging was updated in the PowerPack to ensure that usernames, passwords, API keys, or authorization tokens are hidden.

Known Issues

The following known issues affect version 111 of the Cisco: ACI PowerPack:

  • If a user changes their APIC username and password, the Cisco: ACI PowerPack will not recognize the new credentials. To recognize new credentials, perform one of the following options:
  • Disable or delete the previous administrator account.
  • After updating the credentials, delete any cache entries with "1C88582E76AADD40EB8C5E6A6F71B64A_ACI_{host}_{cred_id}_TOKENS"
  • Users running "Cisco: ACI" version 111 may see a "no object found" error appear from the "Cisco: ACI Vitals" Dynamic Application. To stop the error, give the user an admin role with readPriv, as well as a read-all role with readPriv.