Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights Installation Requirements
Cisco Crosswork Network Automation deployment requirements vary, depending on which of the platform's components are installed together and the number of hosts. This section provides general guidelines and minimum requirements for installing Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights on a single host, unless otherwise specified.
This section contains the following topics:
Virtual Machine (VM) Requirements
You can deploy Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights as a VM on a host that meets the following minimum requirements.
![]() Note |
Upgrading Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights generally requires additional storage apart from the following minimum requirements. For more information, see Upgrade Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights. |
Requirement |
Description |
---|---|
Hypervisor and vCenter |
|
Memory |
96 GB |
Storage |
Storage requirements vary based on factors such as the number of devices being supported, amount of KPI data being collected, and the type of deployment selected. For demos and lab environments, Cisco recommends the thin provision format as it requires the least amount of storage on the host machine. This deployment configuration uses roughly 23 GB of storage. For live systems, Cisco recommends the Thick provision eager zeroed format which allocates 1 TB of storage by default. This should be sufficient for most customer use cases. Solid state drives (SSD) are preferred over traditional hard disk drives (HDD). If you are using HDD, the minimum speed should be 10,000 RPM. For more information, see the volume requirements displayed in the VMware GUI when configuring disk space, as shown in Install Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights Via vCenter. |
vCPU |
16 vCPUs |
Network Connections |
For live deployments, Cisco recommends using dual interfaces, one for the management network and one for the data communications between Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights and Cisco Crosswork Data Gateway. For demos and lab deployments you can choose between using a single interface or dual interfaces. |
IP Addresses |
Two IP addresses (IPv4 or IPv6): One public IP for the Management Network virtual interface and one public or private IP for the Data Network virtual interface. |
NTP Servers |
The IPv4/IPv6 addresses or host names of the NTP servers you plan to use. If you want to enter multiple NTP servers, separate them with spaces. These should be the same NTP servers you use to synchronize devices, clients, and servers across your network. The NTP server(s) must be reachable via the network or the installation will fail. |
DNS Servers |
The IPv4/IPv6 addresses of the DNS servers you plan to use. These should be the same DNS servers you use to resolve host names across your network. |
DNS Search Domain |
The search domain you want to use with the DNS servers (for example, cisco.com). You can only have one search domain. |
Disclaimer |
The text of the legal disclaimer displayed to clients accessing the VM via the command line. Consult your organization's IT or legal department for the content of this text. |
Important Notes
-
The VM runs Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 (ubuntu-18.04.1-server).
-
Kubernetes runs within the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights VM and uses Docker for containerization. The number of containers varies as applications are added or deleted.
Platform Support for Telemetry
Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights supports model-driven telemetry (MDT), SNMP and CLI protocols on the following platforms.
OS | Platform | Software Version1 | Config Mode | Protocol | Encoding | Transport |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cisco IOS-XR |
Cisco ASR 9K (ASR 9001, ASR 9004) |
6.4.1, 6.5.1, 6.5.2, 6.5.3, 6.6.2 |
NSO XR NED CLI 7.13.9 |
MDT |
KVGPB |
TCP |
Cisco NCS 5500 |
6.4.1, 6.5.3, 6.6.2 |
|||||
Cisco XRV9K |
6.5.1, 6.5.2, 6.5.3, 6.6.2 |
|||||
Cisco NCS 6000 |
6.4.1, 6.4.2 |
|||||
Cisco NCS 1K (NCS 1004) |
7.0.1 |
|||||
Cisco CRS (CRS 1K, CRS 3K) |
6.4.2 |
|||||
Cisco IOS-XE |
Cisco CSR 1Kv |
16.10 |
SNMP CLI |
|||
Cisco ASR 1K (ASR 1006) |
16.9.2, 16.10 |
|||||
Cisco NX-OS |
Cisco Nexus 9K |
7.0(3).7(2) |
||||
Cisco Nexus 7K |
8.4(0).SK(1) |
![]() Note |
The platform support information is provided with the assumption that you plan to stream telemetry in band with other traffic. If you want to stream telemetry via a separate management VRF, you must use Cisco IOS XR version 6.2.1 or later. |
Cisco NSO and NED Requirements
Software/Driver | Version |
---|---|
Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (Cisco NSO) |
5.2.03 |
Cisco IOS XR Network Element Driver (NED) |
7.13.9 |
Cisco IOS Network Element Driver |
6.36 |
Supported Web Browsers
This version of Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights supports the web browsers shown in the table below.
Recommended display resolution: 1600 x 900 pixels or higher (minimum: 1366 x 768).
Browser | Version |
---|---|
Google Chrome |
70 or later |
Mozilla Firefox |
70 or later |
In addition to using a supported browser, all client desktops accessing geographical map information in the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights topology maps must be able to reach the mapbox.com map data URL directly, via the standard HTTPS port 443. Similar guidance may apply if you choose a different map data provider, as explained in "Configure Geographical Map Settings" in the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights User Guide.
Ports Used
As a general policy, any ports that are not needed should be disabled. To view a list of all open listening ports, log in as a Linux CLI admin user and run the netstat -aln command.
The following table lists the external ports that are open on the Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights VM.
Port | Protocol | Usage |
---|---|---|
22 |
TCP |
Remote SSH traffic |
323 |
UDP |
Network Time Protocol (NTP) listener |
30603 |
TCP |
User interface (NGINX server listens for secure connections on port 443) |
30607 |
TCP |
For Cisco Crosswork Data Gateway to report vitals and download images. |
30649 |
TCP |
Cisco Crosswork Data Gateway monitos jobs and reports the job status to Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights. |
30993 |
TCP |
Cisco Crosswork Data Gateway sends the collected data to Crosswork Kafka destination. |
The following table lists the destination ports on external devices that may be protected by a firewall. Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights uses these ports to connect to network devices for reachability control. You must open the required ports to allow Cisco Crosswork Change Automation and Health Insights to connect to these devices.
Port | Protocol | Usage |
---|---|---|
7 |
TCP/UDP |
Discover endpoints using ICMP |
22 |
TCP |
Initiate SSH connections with managed devices |
53 |
TCP/UDP |
Connect to DNS |
123 |
UDP |
Network Time Protocol (NTP) |
830 |
TCP |
Initiate NETCONF |