Overview
ThousandEyes is a platform which allows network administrators to execute synthetic tests across the network to desired resources in order to get an idea of the kind of performance users are exposed to. Cisco Catalyst Centre offers a very simple workflow which deploys an Enterprise Agent as a virtual container on the switch using the application hosting features available on the Catalyst 9k platform. It’s possible to deploy this container within the same VLAN real users sit inside for most realistic results.
Prerequisites
- Have a valid Cisco ThousandEyes account.
- A Catalyst 9k switch onboarded to Cisco Catalyst Centre.
- Valid HTTPS credentials assigned to your switch in the inventory.
- Your switch has internet access on port 443.
The Catalyst Centre version used was 2.3.7.6.
The switch version is 17.12.4.
Download ThousandEyes package
1. Within the Cisco ThousandEyes dashboard navigate to Network & App Synthetics > Enterprise Agents and click ‘Add New Enterprise Agent’.
2. Select the ‘Cisco Application Hosting’ tab, click the ‘Download x86_64 – TAR’ button.
3. Copy the ‘Account Group Token’ from the same page.
4. In Cisco Catalyst Centre, navigate to Provision > Application Hosting.
5. Click ‘+ New App’. Drag the downloaded package into the screen and press ‘Upload’.
6. Click on the app and press the ‘Edit’ button. Replace ‘TOKEN_NOT_SET’ with the Account Group Token from the ThousandEyes portal. You may need to remove the ‘–mount type=xxx’ section as it was erroring out on my release. Press ‘Save’.
7. Press the ‘Install’ button bottom right.
8. Name the process, select your site from the hierarchy and check the ‘Readiness’ status of your device. You’ll The most common issue is that HTTPS credentials aren’t applied to the device in the Inventory. If this is the case go to the inventory, edit your device and assign it working HTTPS credentials.
9. Once the device finished syncing up, it should show ready. Select the device and press ‘Next’.
10. Choose which VLAN you want this agent to sit on and type of IP address. Leave everything else as default and press ‘Next’.
11. Review the summary, deploy and wait for the process to finish.
12. You should now see the new agent on the ThousandEyes portal.
Upgrade/Uninstall/Restart
In order to upgrade, uninstall, start or stop the app or take an overall look at the health of the agents navigate to Provision > Application Hosting. Click the ThousandEyes app and click ‘Manage’. These actions will be available to you under the ‘Actions’ dropdown.
