Cisco Mobility Services Engine (Cisco MSE) acts as a hardware platform to deploy and run Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (Cisco CMX). Cisco MSE is delivered in two modes—the physical appliance (box) and the virtual appliance deployed using VMware vSphere Client . Using your Cisco wireless network and location intelligence from Cisco MSE, Cisco CMX helps you create personalized mobile experiences for end users and gain operational efficiency with location-based services.

Cisco CMX helps customers determine the location of devices in their network that can be used for various location based services. The overall location as a platform service from Cisco is known as Cisco DNA Spaces.

For more information about Cisco CMX features for this release, see the Release Notes for Cisco CMX, at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/connected-mobile-experiences/products-release-notes-list.html

Note	Cisco CMX supports the Cisco Mobility Express wireless network solution.

Cisco CMX enables you to access the following services:

• DETECT & LOCATE: The Detect & Locate service uses the data provided by Cisco WLCs to calculate the X,Y location (based on 0,0 at the top left hand side of the map) of wireless devices that are detected by the access points that support the wireless LAN (WLAN) to a high degree of precision (generally +/-5 to 7 meters, 90% of the time with standard location technologies and +/- 3 meters, 50% of the time with Hyperlocation technologies). Given the proper physical environment with access points deployed in accordance with Cisco best practices for a location ready environment. The CMX GUI will be able to display the physical location of:

  • Associated Wireless Devices (shown as green dots in default view)

  • Unassociated Wireless Devices (shown as red dots in default view)

  • RF Interferers (Lightning icon)

  • Access Points (Circles)

  • Rogue Access Points

  • Rogue Clients

  • BLE Tags (Bluetooth Icon)

  • Active Wi-fi RFID Tags (Tag icon)

  The background map can display:

  • Inclusion and Exclusion Zones imported from Cisco Prime Infrastructure

  • Analytics Zones created in Cisco CMX

  • Thick Walls

  • GPS Markers

  Additionally when passed to the CMX Analytics service, this location information provides visibility into customer movements and behavior throughout the venue and throughout the day. The Cisco CMX Analytics service determines device parameters and can display this information as part of six different unique widgets.

  If you choose Location during installation, you will see the following services in Cisco CMX GUI.

  • DETECT & LOCATE: Active for 120 day trial period unless either a CMX base or advanced license is added.

  • ANALYTICS: Active for 120 day trial period unless a CMX advanced license is added. 

  • CONNECT: Active for 120 day trial period unless either a CMX base or advanced license is added

  • MANAGE

  • SYSTEM

  For more information, see Overview of the Detect and Locate Service.

• ANALYTICS: This service provides a set of data analytic tools packaged for analyzing Wi-Fi device locations. It functions as a data visualization engine that helps organizations use their network as a data source for business analysis to understand behavior patterns and trends, which can help them take decisions on how to improve visitor experience and boost customer service.

  The ANALYTICS service allows for the creation of six different type of widgets.

  • Device count

  • Dwell time

  • Dwell time breakdown

  • Associated User Report

  • Path

  • Correlation

  For more information, see The Cisco CMX Analytics Service.

• CONNECT: This service provides intuitive, simple, highly customizable, and location-aware guest services in the form of a captive portal that offers two types of guest on-boarding experiences:

  • Facebook Wi-Fi

  • Custom Portal

  For more information, see The Cisco CMX Connect Service.

• PRESENCE ANALYTICS: Cisco Presence Analytics service is a new analytics engine that detects the presence of visitors via their mobile devices interactions with even a single network access point. The probe requests which are transmitted from the wireless devices provide information, which is used to identify the general location of a client, in respect to the location of even a single access point  which hears the clients probing activity.  The information available from even a single AP allows the Presence Analytics service to develop valuable business intelligence. Presence Analytics uses Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), along with the duration of high signal strength to determine whether a client device is in the site or just passing by. Even if a device is not connected to the access point, its presence is still detected if the device is within the signal range and the wireless is turned on. Given that Presence Analytics develops location information with respect to a given set of APs it has a simpler management overhead in that it does not require the importation or configuration of any maps into the CMX instance. By simply knowing the association of a given AP, or set of APs, to a physical location,  Presence Analytics allows a business insight into the number of visitors to a location, whether these are first time or repeat visitors, the average amount of time each visitor spent in physical proximity to the AP, and the ability to ascertain whether a devise was just passing by a location or if they were actually within the location serviced by the AP. For more information, see Overview of the Presence Analytics Service.

  If you choose Presence during installation, you will see the following services in the Cisco CMX GUI.

  • PRESENCE ANALYTICS

  • CONNECT

  • MANAGE

  • SYSTEM

• MANAGE: This service enables you to manage licenses, users, zones, beacons, and notifications. For more information, see Managing Cisco CMX Configuration.

• SYSTEM: This service enables you to verify the health of the system and view patterns and metrics. For more information, see Managing Cisco CMX System Settings.

For a complete list of new features supported by Cisco CMX for this release, see the Release Notes for Cisco CMX, at:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/mobility-services-engine/products-release-notes-list.html

For more information about Cisco CMX System Messages, see the System Message Guide for Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Release 10.6.3, at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/wireless/mse/10-6-3/cmx_syslog/b_cmx_syslog1063.xlsx

Note	The installation methods for Location and Presence are different. If you want to change the service, you must perform a fresh installation.

Tip

To clean up long queues and long-running processes, we recommend that you schedule a full restart of Cisco CMX once a month during a low activity time, such as late at night or early in the morning. The restart takes approximately 5 minutes to complete. To restart Cisco CMX services, follow these steps: Enter the cmxctl stop -a command. Enter the cmxctl start -a command. Contact Cisco Customer Support (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/index.html) for the patch file.

The following components are mandatory for you to configure Cisco CMX 10.5:

• Exported maps (in the form of files) from Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.2, 3.3, or 3.4.

  Note	Import maps from Cisco Prime Infrastructure only if you are using the Cisco CMX Location service. You do not have to import them if you are using the Presence Analytics service because this service does not require maps; all configurations are accomplished using the Presence Analytics Dashboard.

• Cisco Wireless Controller (Cisco WLC) 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, or 8.7.

• Cisco CMX 10.5 License (Cisco CMX 10.5 ships with a fully functional 120-day evaluation license that is activated after Cisco CMX is installed and started the first time.)

  For more information about license models, see Managing Licenses. For information about adding permanent licenses, see Add a License.

  Tip	If you are using the phycial appliance, ensure that your disk has good I/O (operations per second) rate. Use the redis-benchmark command to verify the same. The ideal I/O rate must be either equal to 1500 or above.

Cisco CMX Release 10.4 was running with CentOS 6.6. With Cisco CMX 10.5, the entire operating system is upgraded to the latest CentOS 7.x. The CentOS 7 (1708) build is used as the new operating system version. The new minimal version of CentOS 7 release is used as the base operating system. Additionally, all packages are added to the release as done in Cisco CMX release versions earlier than Release 10.4.

The operating system upgrade also supports disk encryption, which is done by encrypting a file system. The encrypted file system protects against any kind of bare-metal attacks against the hard drive.

Cisco CMX 10.5 does not support a direct upgrade. Instead you need to take a backup of the existing Cisco CMX and install a new OVA or a bare metal ISO image. After the new OVA or ISO is configured suucessfully, perform a restore of Cisco CMX.

For more information about installing Cisco CMX 10.5, see Cisco Mobility Services Engine Virtual Appliance Installation Guide for Cisco CMX Release 10.5 at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/connected-mobile-experiences/products-installation-guides-list.html

Cisco CMX ships with a fully functional 120-day evaluation license, which is activated after Cisco CMX is installed and started for the first time. The countdown starts when you start Cisco CMX and enable a service.

You must upload a permanent license to Cisco CMX before the evaluation license expires. Two weeks before the evaluation license expires, you will receive a daily alert to obtain a permanent license. If the evaluation license expires, you will not be able to access the Cisco CMX GUI or APIs. Cisco CMX will continue to run in the background and collect data until you add a permanent license.

Note	After the evaluation license expires, only users with admin privileges can log in to add additional licenses.

Cisco CMX provides multiple reminders that the evaluation license is about to expire:

• For two weeks before the evaluation license expires, a daily alert is displayed on the Cisco CMX System > Alerts window.

• An alert email is sent if you have configured email settings.

• An alert is displayed when you log in to Cisco CMX.

To add a license, click Add new license from the alert. You can also add a license from the Cisco CMX Manage > Licenses window. For information about adding permanent licenses, see Managing Licenses.

Note	The license file has a .lic extension. Make sure it is the .lic file that you install on Cisco CMX. The .lic file is available as part of your licensing package and is sent as an email attachment from licensing. Extract the .lic file to your system and upload to Cisco CMX when adding a new license.

For details about procuring licenses, see the Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Version 10 Ordering and Licensing Guide.

Cisco CMX relies on incoming Network Mobility Service Protocol (NMSP) data from any of the Cisco Wireless Controllers (Cisco WLCs) added to the system. The following sections describe the process to follow.

• To enable a Cisco CMX service using the CLI, run the following command:

  cmxctl enable {consul | qlesspyworker | cassandra | iodocs | cache_6382 | cache_6380 | cache_6381 | cache_6383 | cache_6384| cache_6385 | influxdb | metrics | confd | cache_6379 | cache_6378 | haproxy | database | analytics | connect | location | configuration | matlabengine | hyperlocation | nmsplb | agent}

• To disable a Cisco CMX service using the CLI, run the following command:

  cmxctl disable {consul | qlesspyworker | cassandra | iodocs | cache_6382 | cache_6380 | cache_6381 | cache_6383 | cache_6384| cache_6385 | influxdb | metrics | confd | cache_6379 | cache_6378 | haproxy | database | analytics | connect | location | configuration | matlabengine | hyperlocation | nmsplb | agent}

For detailed information about these commands, see the Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Command Reference Guide, at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/connected-mobile-experiences/products-command-reference-list.html

Cisco CMX requires certificates for serving the user interface over SSL/TLS and for other secure connections.

When certificates are imported, there is a validity check that verifies the start date and end date. If the dates are not within the range or if the certificates are going to expire soon (withhin 30 days), UI alarms and audit log messages are generated.

There are two options to install certificates – install self-signed certificates or import external CA-signed certificates. Following sections describes these 2 options in detail.

Note

CMX Certificate is used for both Server and Client. Hence the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) contains Extended Key Usage as follows: TLS Web Server Authentication TLS Web Client Authentication We recommend that while sending the CSR to Certificate Authority (CA), ensure that the signed certificate includes both TLS Web Server Authentication and TLS Web Client Authentication as in the CSR. If the signed server certificate is missing TLS Web Client Authentication values in Extended Key Usage extension of the certificate, then certificate will get imported successfully but CMX services will fail to start and eventually crash. If the signed certificate has both TLS Web Server Authentication and TLS Web Client Authentication values in Extended Key Usage extension, then server certificate will get imported successfully and all CMX services will start successfully.

Using the MANAGE service in Cisco CMX, you can create new users and assign roles to them based on the tasks they have to perform, that is, enabling role-based access control.

The following list displays the types of users:

• Admin users—An admin user can access all the services and functionalities (based on the license type) of Cisco CMX.

• Others—An admin user can create other users and assign roles to them.

The following is a list of roles that can be assigned to users:

• System

• Manage

• Analytics

• Read Only

• Location

• Admin

• ConnectExperience

• Connect

For more information about the creation of users and assignment of roles, see Managing Users.

The Cisco CMX Setup Assistant pop-up helps you through the basic steps before you start using your system. The Cisco CMX Setup Assistant is automatically displayed when you log in to Cisco CMX. To relaunch the Cisco CMX Setup Assistant, click the Help ()icon.

Cisco CMX release 10.4 supports new active clients version 3 API under Location REST API. The new Active Clients v3 API allows frequent requests without impacting other services such as location service. The new Node.js processes API requests in the API v3.The location service sends the local notifications to the API server and active clients are tracked in the API server memory.

The Active Clients v3 API has its own user ID and password for accessing the REST APIs. Use the cmxos apiserver command to define the unique user ID and password. The Cisco CMX web UI username and passwords will not work for API v3.

If you install Cisco CMX Release 10.5 or upgrade from a previous release, the password to access the Active Clients v3 API is generated in random manner. Use this password to start the server and open the prompt. Set the new credentials using the cmxos apiserver command.

Note	Active Clients v3 API under Location API documentation section includes better parameter testing. Active Clients Version 2 API has been deprecated in Cisco CMX 10.4 release.

Active Clients v3 API supports these additional parameters:

• mapHierarchy

• manufacturuer

• macAddressSearch

• associated/probing

The following log files are located in the directory /opt/cmx/var/log/apiserver for troubleshooting:

• cmxapiserver.pid: Processes ID file for the top process.

• server.log: Log file for messages and errors

• stdout.log: Standard output messages

To obtain the following APIs, use the https://cmx-ip-address /apidocs/ URL:

• Configuration REST APIs for configuring different aspects of Cisco CMX.

• Location-based REST APIs for finding location-specific details about visitors.

• Analytics-based REST APIs for finding analytical data on visitors.

• Connect-based REST APIs for finding user session information.

• Presence-based REST APIs for finding presence data on visitors.

Note	For support in using APIs, including the GitHub version of API Version 3, contact the Cisco DevNet Community at: https://developer.cisco.com/site/cmx-mobility-services/.

In Cisco CMX, Linux commands are restricted to prevent unauthorized users from inadvertently modifying the system configuration. This is to control access to the Cisco CMX so that users can be prevented from running the commands that a normal user should never run under normal operations or standard troubleshooting situations. Also, the restricted access prevents users from modifying the system configuration.

The following table lists the commands allowed in the Restricted CLI.

Cisco DNA Center supports the integration of Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) for wireless maps. With the Cisco CMX integration, you can get the exact location of your wireless clients, rogue access points and interferers on the floor map within the Cisco DNA Center user interface.

Depending on your requirements, you can create Cisco CMX settings either at the global level or at the site, building, or floor level. For a small enterprise, you can assign Cisco CMX at the global level, which is the parent node. All children inherit their settings from the parent node. For a medium enterprise, you can assign Cisco CMX at the building level and for a small enterprise, you can assign Cisco CMX at the floor level.

For more information about Cisco DNA Center, see the Cisco DNA Center User Guide at:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/dna-spaces/series.html

Note	Cisco CMX should be anonymized for security purposes.