Enabling Applications on the Cisco APIC-EM

Cisco APIC-EM Application Separation

The Cisco APIC-EM treats individual applications as separate from the core infrastructure. Specifically, individual applications can enabled to run on the controller or disabled using either the GUI or the CLI. The following applications are supported for this release:

  • Active Advisor—Application that provides information about devices in your Cisco APIC-EM inventory that have hardware End-of-Life warnings and vulnerabilities identified by the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT).

  • Integrity Verification—Application that provides automated and continuous monitoring of network devices, noting any unexpected or invalid results that may indicate compromise.

  • IWAN—Application that provides IWAN services and functionality on the controller.

  • PnP—Application that provides Network PnP services and functionality on the controller.

  • Remote Troubleshooter—Application that uses the Cisco IronPort infrastructure to create a tunnel that enables a support engineer to connect to an APIC-EM cluster and troubleshoot issues with your system.


Note

Each Cisco APIC-EM application bundle consists of service bundles, meta data files, and scripts; however for this specific release, application bundles are only provided as part of the ISO image.

Enabling and Disabling Applications

Cisco APIC-EM treats individual applications as separate from the core infrastructure. Specifically, individual applications can be enabled to run on the controller or disabled.

You can perform the application management procedures from the Applications tab in the Cisco APIC-EM GUI.

Figure 1. Applications Window

Before You Begin

You must have successfully deployed the Cisco APIC-EM and it must be operational.

You must have administrator (ROLE_ADMIN) permissions and either access to all resources (RBAC scope set to ALL) or an RBAC scope that contains all of the resources that you want to group. For example, to create a group containing a specific set of resources, you must have access to those resources (custom RBAC scope set to all of the resources that you want to group).

For information about user permissions and RBAC scopes required to perform tasks using the Cisco APIC-EM, see the chapter, "Managing Users".

Important:

Enabling and disabling applications for the Cisco APIC-EM may involve controller downtime for a period of time. For this reason, we recommend that you schedule performing these procedures during your network off-peak hours or a maintenance time period.

    Step 1   In the Home window, click either admin or the Settings icon (gear) at the top right corner of the screen.
    Step 2   Click the App Management link from the drop-down menu.
    Step 3   Review the Applications tab that now appears.

    The Applications tab consists of the following fields:

    • Installed Applications—Field that displays current applications installed on the controller, status (enabled or disabled), and version.

    • Drag & Drop—Field where you can drop in an application file to download and install it.

    Step 4   In the Installed Applications field, review the applications currently installed on the controller, status (enabled or disabled) and versions.

    Click on the information icon ("i" symbol within a blue circle) for additional application information.

    General information

    Provides general information about the application including a definition, its version, whether it can be enabled by default, and whether or not it can be disabled for this release.

    Requires

    Displays the other applications that it is dependent upon. Proper operation of the application is contingent upon those other applications being installed, enabled, and running.

    Services Provided

    Provides a list of services and the service version that the application will install.

    Step 5   Drag and drop your updated application to the Drag & Drop field on the controller GUI.
    Important:

    For this specific controller release, application bundles are only provided as part of the ISO image. For this reason, this step in the procedure is not currently available.

    Step 6   Review the status bar for the application upload.

    The time required for the application upload will vary depending upon the size of the file. After the upload, the new application appears in the Installed Applications field.

    Note   

    A warning message will appear if the following conditions are not met:

    • A prerequisite application bundle is not enabled on the controller.

    • The system requirements of memory, CPU, and/or storage are not met.

    Important:

    For this specific controller release, the application bundles are only provided as part of the ISO image. For this reason, this step in the procedure is not currently available.

    Step 7   Enable the new application by clicking its Enable button.

    When prompted to confirm, click Ok.

    Note   

    A warning message will appear if the following conditions are not met:

    • A prerequisite application bundle is not enabled on the controller.

    • The system requirements of memory, CPU, and/or storage are not met

    What to Do Next

    Check the Installed Applications field. When the status for the application changes to Enable, then proceed to access and work with the application in the controller.