News

Cisco Details New SD-WAN SDK

• By David Ramel
• 09/09/2020

Cisco has been highlighting documentation for its software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) solution, most recently with a post about its new software development kit (SDK), which followed new documentation on the SD-WAN API.

The new SDK post fits in nicely with the previous Aug. 26 SD-WAN API documentation post, as Cisco said, "The SDK enables configuration and operations of Cisco vManage via Python-based API bindings."

vManage is the company's centralized network management system that provides a GUI interface for monitoring, configuring and maintaining devices and links in the overlay network, based on technology gleaned from the company's acquisition of Viptela several years ago.

"In a traditional SD-WAN deployment, nearly all management of the SD-WAN control plane and overlay of VPNs and edge devices is done via the Cisco vManage GUI," Cisco said. "The SDK allows automation of vManage via Python without any GUI interaction."

Benefits of that approach, Cisco said, include:

• Integration with other platforms
• Basic management of policy or device/feature templates
• Backup/restore
• CI/CD

The full SDK documentation can now be found on Cisco's DevNet developer program site.

The Cisco SD-WAN vManage API documentation is also newly available on DevNet, Cisco said in the Aug. 26 post.

"Cisco SD-WAN vManage API is a REST API interface for controlling, configuring, and monitoring the Cisco devices in an overlay network," Cisco said. "The API plays a pivotal role for clients to consume the features provided by vManage."

The company listed the following vManage API use cases:

• Monitoring device status
• Configuring a device, such as attaching a template to a device
• Querying and aggregating device statistics

The new SDK post, meanwhile, details how to install and use the SDK, along with how to get the GitHub-hosted source code via the DevNet Code Exchange.