Once installed, AmpCon™AmpCon-DC also simplifies the ongoing management of Pica8 PicOS Software Switchesswitches, including configuration management, switch inventory, software updates, and more.
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Configuration Management
AmpCon™AmpCon-DC includes native configuration management capabilities, enabling which you can use to push out an update to a single switch or to an entire group of switches. It eliminates the By using AmpCon-DC, you don’t need to pull up edit and edit push switch configurations one by one. In this way, reducing the likelihood of errors can be reduced, and simplifies the process by enabling it to be done from the same centralized tool; no switch configuration process can be simplified, and you don’t need to deal with the added expense or headache of a third-party tool.
In practice, the configuration management feature can greatly simplify the job of updating switches to deal with a new class of devicedevices, such as security devices to protect Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. Network Your network administrators can detail how the network should needs to treat the security devices , perhaps (such as putting them on their your own VLAN), and detail where traffic from the devices is allowed to go. With a single command, the update can then be pushed out to appropriate network By adding only one configuration in the AmpCon-DC UI, you can push the update to appropriate switches.
AmpCon™AmpCon-DC greatly simplifies the job of detailing just what level of network access level and priority each class of device should devices need to get – and then pushing the update at once to all relevant switches.
Configuration Backup, Compliance,
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and Rollback
Once the desired configurations are set and the network is stable, we would like to lock it down and you might want to make sure that accidental changes don’t disrupt operations. And when a config change is made to add devices or say When you make a configuration change such as adding devices or a VLAN, it is important to back it up your configuration. AmpCon™
AmpCon-DC makes this really simple configuration backup easy by automating config backups and scheduling configuration backup on a specified schedule, date and time and saving the last n backups (default=100), which can be used N backups as you need. You can use the backup configuration to recover quickly from a crash or corruption of a switch. And it allows marking In addition, you can mark a specific backup instance as the “Golden Config” which Golden Config. The Golden Config will never be deleted and is used by default as the config to rollback the configuration to roll back a switch to a stable configuration in case when the switch operation is compromised. The You can also use the Golden Config can also be used as the basis to run an automated compliance check to verify that whether the network is operating as designed.
Switch Inventory
AmpCon™AmpCon-DC also supports switch inventory features. Here again, Though third-party tools are available to also support this capability, but they these tools add expense to your company. In addition to the software, such tools typically run on a Windows Server Enterprise Edition machine, which means also adds additional server licensing costs.
Not so with AmpCon™-DC which, as previously noted, deploys In contrast, AmpCon-DC can be deployed in minutes on a virtual machine. It
AmpCon-DC provides detailed inventory of all switches, including switch hardware details, software versionversions, configurations, configuration and more.
License Updates
AmpCon™AmpCon-DC can automate automates the process of checking and updating the switch licenses with new Support the latest support entitlements. A License Audit task checks the (whether a group of specified ) switches for a has valid license licenses and created creates a report of their the license status (showing including the support expiration date and other details). Running “License Update (or Action)” .
The License Action task automatically updates the license keys on all switches whose support is due to expire in the next 30 days , and logs the result in to a report that can be examined or downloaded, which you can examine or download.
RMA Replacements
AmpCon™AmpCon-DC incorporates a unique workflow to help with enable return merchandise authorization (RMA) replacements. When hardware of a switch fails and is replaced with new switch hardware, the RMA module feature takes the config configurations from the failed switch hardware, updates it with the serial number of the replacement hardwarenew switch, and pushes out this config the configurations to the new switch to bring it up seamlessly in the network.Flexible Ansible Extensions
While AmpCon™-DC provides commonly used features and functions network teams need for day-to-day operations, it also enables companies to add capabilities they may require by writing Ansible playbooks to create customized 5 workflows. If there’s a certain routine your company follows on a regular basis, you can build a workflow to automate it, such as by using as series of “if/then” statements.
Additionally, Pica8 offers a series of Ansible playbooks, which are templates for automating routines including:
Compliance and consistency checks, to ensure switches stay in compliance with industry regulations that require a certain configuration to maintain proper security and privacy
Connectivity check for PicOS® Software Switches
Network operation and remediation routines, including dynamic policy enforcement
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Simplified Software and Switch Upgrades
The nature of PicOS itself makes it simpler to manage vs. any legacy switch/router switches compared to other legacy network operating system (NOS) of switches or routers. Because it’s PicOS is Linux-based , PicOS® is and compartmentalized, which means you can update or change one component or aspect without affecting the other components. For example, if you’re pushing out a security patch, that it affects only the security component of the NOS; you don’t have need to replace the entire software /or firmware image.If you’re familiar with legacy NOSs such as Cisco IOS, you know that’s not the case. Any update requires a wholesale software/firmware change, with all the attendant disruption that comes with it: putting the change through a qualification cycle, lab testing, the works.By contrast, if you’re making a change to PicOS that has nothing to do with the movement of data, such as a security change, you don’t need to go through all of those steps.
AmpCon™-DC makes it easy and error-free to upgrade your switches to the latest PicOS® version. When you are ready to go, you simply schedule a job identifying the group of switches, the new software image, and the time window when you want the upgrades to be executed. The task executes automatically in the background and captures the results in a logfile that can be checked for the details and updates the task status on completion.
Additional Features
• RBAC (Role Based Access Control for users)
User logins are authenticated via a TACACS+ server
Additional Features
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
AmpCon-DC adopts role-based access control, which is used to permit individual users to perform specific actions and get visibility to an access scope. You can assign each user a specific role with associated permissions.
In addition, you can authenticate user logins through a TACACS+ server, which also determines their access permissions based on their
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roles. If the TACACS+ server can’t be reached from AmpCon-DC, you can log in to the AmpCon-DC UI with local users that are defined in AmpCon-DC.
Parking lot
You can use parking lot to manage switches that have been shown in the network and registered with
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the AmpCon-DC
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server but haven’t been configured by the
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administrator.
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Setting up a group of switches
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To perform switch lifecycle operations more conveniently, you can organize switches in groups by region, location, building
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, and more.
Importing switches
For those switches that were not originally deployed through
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AmpCon-DC, you can import them directly to AmpCon-DC to manage them.
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Decommission
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workflow
To shut a switch down temporarily and then
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redeploy it in another location
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• Operational Logs
Track all activity in AmpCon™-DC, and can be used for troubleshooting to drill down and analyze issues
• Monitoring
Allows drilling down into a switch to look at its current status, port statistics, etc.
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, you can decommission the switch in the AmpCon-DC UI.
Operational logs
You can use operational logs to track all activities and troubleshoot issues by drilling down and analyzing issues.Monitoring
You can get an overview of all switches or drill down to a switch to check its status and metrics such as port stats.