Introduction to DNA Center Assurance and Analytics

Today I am going to talk about the DNA Center Assurance and Analytics. As you know DNA center is the orchestration or Management layer over the deployed LAN/WAN solution. Cisco investing a lot to bring all architectures under the DNA. DNA center is a single solution under DNA architecture which can be combined with Software Defined Access or Software Defined WAN solutions to have a single pane of glass.

Today's market is talking about the innovation and the vendors are coming with many of the innovation ideas. One of the innovation idea is to automate your network which Cisco is approaching via DNA center. DNA center can integrate with many of the various components to have a base automated, Semi automated and Fully automated solutions.

Here in this article I am going to talk about one of the component which can provide the visibility in the network and the name is DNA Center Assurance.

 DNA Center Assurance simplifies and abstracts the collection and analysis layers and offers a rich set of APIs along with a web interface DNA Center Assurance is a multipurpose, real-time, network data collection and analytics engine used to significantly increase the business potential of network data. 

Fig 1.1- DNA Center Assurance and Analytics

DNA Center Assurance addresses many common use cases, including monitoring and troubleshooting, cost management, and policy discovery, while supporting the broader Cisco DNA strategy.

By using a single set of network data, DNA Center Assurance powers a broad set of use cases. These efficiencies streamline the operational and network management overhead of collecting and analysing network data, thereby allowing companies to effectively focus on their business goals.

Data Collection and Ingestion : With the help of DNA Center Assurance we can leverages streaming technologies to collect a variety of network telemetry and contextual data in real time. 

Data Correlation and Analysis: Well as you know data is ingested, DNA Center Assurance correlates and analysis the data. 

Data Visualisation and Action: Data is stored in databases and exposed through APIs to DNA Center Assurance as well as other applications, such as Capacity Planning.

Apart from it DNA center can do various work which can simplify the day to day operations , We can perform a path trace between two nodes in your network, which means a specified source device and a specified destination device. The two nodes can be a combination of wired or wireless hosts and/or Layer 3 interfaces. 

In addition, you can specify the protocol the DNA-Center controller should use to establish the path trace connection, either TCP or UDP. DNA Center controller reviews and collects network topology and routing data from the discovered devices. It then uses this data to calculate a path between the two hosts or Layer 3 interfaces, and displays the path in a path trace topology. The topology includes the path direction and the devices along the path. The display also shows the protocol of the devices along the path