Creating Programmable Reports in NDFC

Hello. My name is Tomas Klenschnik. I'm a Cisco data center network subject matter expert with the Cisco technical education team. In this video, you will create programmable reports in NexSys dashboard fabric controller. You will begin with exploring the report templates in NexSys dashboard fabric controller. Then you will create various programmable reports, and you will finish with verifying detailed report output. Let's look at an example where you have implemented a VXLAN EVPN Fabric called Fabric with two Spine and two Leaf switches in your environment. You would like to receive information about Fabric Inventory and various resources used and resources still available in Fabric in an automated way. You decided to use Programmable Reports feature available in Nexo's Dashboard Fabric Controller that generates reports using various Python scripts. Your first task is to explore report templates to see what kind of templates you can use to generate reports. Since you're interested in finding out about the inventory in your fabric, you will look at the content of an inventory report template more in detail. Then you will create an inventory report for fabric based on a previously checked template and explore the report. You will create another inventory report, this time for leaf one and leaf two switches only. In the end, you will create a third programmable report now to get information about various resources used and resources still available in Fabric. Open and log in to the NexSys dashboard fabric controller. From the left menu bar, click operations and choose templates. Filter the templates by attributes. Click filter by attributes field, choose type, select equals, type in a report, and press enter. You can see several report templates pre configured. The report template type is used to support the programmable reports feature. Report template has two template subtypes, upgrade and generic. This can be seen from the subtype column. Under the tag column, you can see if the report using a particular template is generated for a device or for a fabric. Check the content of one of the templates. For this example, select inventory report template. Click actions and choose edit template content. Scroll down to see the content of a Python script written to get inventory information for all the devices in a fabric. Click x to close the edit template window. Now let's create a few reports based on some of the templates just checked. Under operations, choose programmable reports. Click create report. Creating a programmable report is a two step procedure in NexSys dashboard fabric controller. In the first step, give a report a name. In this example, type in fabric inventory. Click select a template. Choose inventory report and click select. Click next. In the second step, you can choose when and how often a report should be run. For example, a report can be run daily, weekly, or monthly. Choose periodic option to see that you can also specify recurrence randomly, such as every couple of hours or even minutes. You need to specify start date, optionally end date, period, and start time. For the purpose of this video, you will run the report only once, so under Recurrence choose option Now. You can send a report to a specific email address. You can enter the email address in the Email field on the right side of the window. You will use this report for Fabric in this example, so select Fabric and click Save. You can see the report definition with status Running. After a few seconds, click on refresh button. Status has changed to success. Click on report step. Double click the report. Expand Summary to observe switch models, software version, and switch roles in the fabric. Expand Chassis to see all the devices in the fabric and their properties. In the report, you can also see modules, switch licenses, and NexSys dashboard fabric controller licenses information. Click x to close the report. Besides creating a fabric inventory report, you can also create an inventory report for switches. Click on report definitions tab. Again, click create report. Give a report a name. In this example, type in leaf one dash two inventory. Click select a template. Choose switch inventory and click select. Click next. For this video, run the report only once. So under recurrence, choose option now. Under the devices, you can see all the devices from all the fabric registered in NexSys dashboard fabric controller. In this example, select leaf one and leaf two that belong to fabric and click save. You can see the report definition with status running. Scope type for this report is device. After a few seconds, click on the refresh button. Status has changed to success. Click on the reports tab. You can see two new reports, one for leaf one and one for leaf two. Double click the report for leaf one to see the report details. Expand summary to observe leaf one properties. Expand modules to see all the modules such as Ethernet and fan modules that are part of leaf one chassis. In the report, you can also see information about the licenses for Leaf one in this example. Click X to close the report. Now let's create another report, this time a report about fabric resources. Again, click create report. Give a report a name. In this example, type in fabric resources. Click select a template. Choose fabric resources and click select. Click next. For this video, run the report only once. So under recurrence, choose option now. You will use this report for fabric in this example, so select fabric and click save. Click on report definitions tab. You can see the report with status success. Scope type for this report is Fabric. Click on Reports tab. You can see a new report called Fabric Resources. Click once on the report. A slide in panel appears. You can see resources summary for fabric, such as various VLAN, ID, and IP address pool range. Click X to close the slide in panel. Double click Fabric Resources report to see the report details. Expand Summary to observe the resource pool names, their range, maximum available entries, and their current usage. If you want to see details of a particular resource pool, scroll down. In this example, let's expand resource pool for loopback zero. You can see that loopback zero IP pool has assigned four IP addresses. One for leaf one, leaf two, spine one, and spine two. Using a fabric resources report template, you don't see only an IP address resource pools. Scroll down to see resources in a resource pool named L3VNI. The resource pool used in this example contains VNI identifiers with IDs from fifty thousand to fifty nine thousand. Expand the resource pool to see VNI ID fifty thousand has been allocated to myVRF fifty thousand in fabric in this example. Click X to close the report. This concludes the Cisco technical education video on creating programmable reports in Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller. Thank you for watching.