Overview

AmpCon is an application developed by Pica8 to automate the deployment, provisioning and lifecycle management of switches.  AmpCon can be installed on a physical server or a virtual machine (VM), although the preferred and most straightforward approach is to install the OVA provided by Pica8. 

AmpCon is designed to automate the most common workflows in an enterprise through built in business logic that can be executed from a simple GUI.  These include functions like initial software installation, config provisioning and deployment, license installation and license update, software upgrade, config backup, and config updates.  In addition, it provides the capability of orchestrating custom workflows through Ansible playbooks.

AmpCon is built on Centos Linux and incorporates a web GUI and a MySQL database along with Python code built on top of an Ansible engine.  Initial installation and configuration of the AmpCon application is done with a script that is executed at the Linux CLI;  all subsequent settings are done through the GUI that is accessed with a browser.

AmpCon provides a scalable framework that can work across the whole enterprise.  A single instance of AmpCon can be used to manage thousands of switches deployed across multiple sites. Scalability and availability can be further improved through a cluster of AmpCon servers that can be operated in active-standby mode to share the load and provide fail safe redundancy. The databases are automatically synchronized in the background across the cluster of servers, and users can login to any of the AmpCon server to execute the functions. 

AmpCon can be used as single instance to deploy and manage switches across multiple remote locations securely.
Customers can choose to deploy a local AmpCon server at each location,  and in this case each location operates as a separate independently licensed network. Each AmpCon server only controls switches in the local site.

AmpCon is the control center for all switch licensing. It tracks the current customer entitlement and allows the appropriate number of switches to be operated in the network. AmpCon needs a valid license with active support to perform all its functions. An enterprise may operate a single AmpCon instance or a cluster of redundant servers under a single AmpCon license.