Bulk Command Line Interface

Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) promotes consistent configurations across your devices by giving administrators the ability to send one command to multiple devices simultaneously. CDO groups responses to a bulk CLI command by response type and by device type so you can identify which ASAs returned a certain response and which devices were sent a particular command. CDO maintains a historical list of your commands so you can rerun them or modify them. For more information, see "Bulk Command Line Interface" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Create ASA Network Policies

Now you can create a network policy for an ASA. You can add rules to the policy, change the order of rules within a policy, activate or deactivate rules within the policy, as well as copy that policy from one ASA to another! See "Create an ASA Network Policy" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator to get started!

Bulk Operations

Certain CDO configuration tasks can be performed on multiple devices at the same time; they can be done "in bulk." This feature saves you time and promotes consistency among your devices. These are the operations you can perform in bulk and some additional features we've added to compliment them.

Bulk ASA and ASDM Upgrades

You can now use CDO's upgrade wizard to upgrade the ASA and ASDM images on multiple ASAs simultaneously. We make the process easy by performing all the necessary upgrade steps behind the scenes. The wizard guides you through the process of choosing compatible ASA and ASDM software images, installing them, and rebooting the device to complete the upgrade. We secure the upgrade process by validating that the images you choose on CDO are the ones copied to, and installed on, your ASA. For more information, see "Bulk ASA and ASDM Upgrade" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Bulk Read Configurations

If a configuration change is made to a device outside of CDO, the device's configuration stored on CDO and the device's local configuration are no longer the same. In this case, CDO displays a "Conflict detected" message to alert the administrator. The administrator performs a "Read policy" action, which overwrites the configuration on CDO with the configuration stored on the device. The two configurations are now the same, they are "Synced." The bulk read configuration function allows administrators to perform this action on multiple devices at the same time.

Another use for bulk reading configurations is to prevent changes staged on CDO from being written to your devices. By reading the configurations from the device to CDO, you overwrite all staged changes on CDO. This could also be a good way to revert changes you made to your devices' configurations on CDO if you need to. For more information, see "Bulk Read Configuration" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Bulk Reconnecting Devices

CDO allows an administrator to attempt to reconnect more than one managed device to CDO simultaneously. When a device CDO manages is marked "unreachable," CDO can no longer detect out of band configuration changes or mange the device. Attempting to reconnect the devices is a simple first step in restoring CDO's management of the device. For more information, see "Bulk Reconnecting Devices" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Bulk Enabling and Disabling of Conflict Detection

You can enable or disable conflict detection for multiple devices simultaneously. Enabling conflict detection will alert you to instances where changes have been made to a device outside of CDO. For more information, see "Enabling Conflict Detection" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Jobs Notifications

The notifications tab is located at the bottom right corner of CDO. It displays an active count of ongoing actions in a job.

Jobs Page

The Jobs page displays information about the status, success, and failure of a bulk operation. Color-coded rows in the jobs table indicate individual actions that have succeeded or failed. For more information, see "Jobs Page" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Reinitiate a Task for a Failed Action

CDO remembers the bulk operation, identifies individual actions that failed, and saves you time by re-running the task on only the failed actions. When reviewing the jobs page, if you find one or more actions in a bulk operation that failed, you can re-run the bulk operation after you have made whatever corrections are necessary. CDO will re-run the job on only the failed actions. For more information, see "Reinitiating a Bulk Operation that Resulted in a Failed Action" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

NAT Documentation

We have documented procedures for these use cases:

• Enable a Server on the Inside Network to Reach the Internet Using a Public IP Address

• Make a server on the inside network available to users on a specific port of a public IP address

• Translate a range of private IP addresses to a range of public IP addresses

CLI Logging

Whenever you use CDO to execute a CLI command on an ASA, the command and the results of the command are now logged in the device's changelog. In the example below, the entry for CLI Execution row shows what commands were sent and the Changed ASA Config row shows what was changed in the configuration file as a result of the commands.

Bulk Onboarding of ASAs

You can now onboard multiple ASAs to CDO in a single batch. For more information, see "Onboard ASAs in Bulk" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Shared Network Policies

Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) finds identical network policies used by multiple ASAs and identifies them on the network policy page. If you have a shared network policy, you can change it once and distribute the change to the other devices that share the policy. This keeps network policies consistent across devices. For more information, see "Shared Network Policies" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Filter Change Logs by Time and Date

You can now filter events in the change log by time and date. Navigate Monitoring > Change Log and find this time and date calendar in the filter bar:

Packet Tracer

Packet tracer helps you troubleshoot access and policy issues. Packet tracer sends a synthetic packet into the network and evaluates how the saved routing configuration, NAT rules, and policy configurations interact with that packet. For example, if a rule is dropping packets, packet tracer identifies that rule for you and gives you a link to it, so you can evaluate it and edit it. Packet tracer can be used on a live, online, physical or virtual Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). For more information, see "ASA Packet Tracer" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

New Screencast!

New screencast demonstrating how you can use CDO to upgrade a single ASA or two ASAs configured as an active/standby failover pair.

Updated Documentation

• Resolve configuration Conflicts - A troubleshooting topic that describes what to do when you have a device that is "Not Synced" or reports "Conflict Detected."

• Configuration Changes Made to ASAs in Active-Active Failover Mode - Provides important information about making configuration changes to ASA's configured in Failover mode as an Active-Active pair.

• Resolving Certificate Issues - A troubleshooting topic that explores why CDO may reject a certificate and what to do about it.

• Updates to our Frequently Asked Questions page.

CDO Service Status Page

CDO maintains a customer-facing service status page at https://status.defenseorchestrator.com/. The page shows if the CDO service is up and any service interruptions it may have had. You can view up-time information with daily, weekly, or monthly graphs.

On the status page, you can click Subscribe to Updates to receive a notification if the CDO service goes down.

CDO Support Page

Customers can now get support through the CDO interface:

• Paying customers should open support cases directly with Cisco's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by clicking Support Case Manager on the new Contact Support page.

• All demo, internal, and trial customers can send email to cdo.support@cisco.com by entering their question in the details request form on the Contact Support page. A member of our support staff will respond as soon as possible.

External Links for Devices

You can now create a hyperlink to an external resource and associate it with a device you manage with CDO. You could use this feature to create a convenient link to a search engine, documentation resource, a corporate wiki, or any other URL you choose. You can associate as many external links with a device as you want. You can also associate the same link with multiple devices at the same time.

New Object Functions

• Resolving Duplicate, Inconsistent, and Unused Objects: When resolving object issues, you will have better visibility into network and services objects. You see a consolidated view of all the objects in the group, making it easier to compare object to object. You also have command buttons to resolve object issues by merging, renaming, or ignoring them.

• New object filtering: More precise search capabilities to find the objects you are looking for.

Upgrades to ASAs configured as an Active/Standby Failover Pair

CDO has extended the functionality of the upgrade wizard to include upgrading ASAs configured as an active/standby failover pair. You use the same wizard functionality as you did for upgrading individual ASAs but now you can upgrade an active/standby failover pair. For more information about this feature, see "Upgrading ASA and ASDM Images in an Active-Standby Pair" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Upgrades to Individual ASAs in Single Context or Multi-Context Mode

CDO now provides a wizard that allows you to upgrade the ASA and ASDM images installed on an individual ASA in single or context or multi-context mode. We make the process easy by performing all the necessary upgrade steps behind the scenes. The wizard guides you through the process of choosing compatible ASA Software and ASDM images, installing them, and rebooting the device to complete the upgrade. We secure the upgrade process by validating that the images you chose on CDO are the ones copied to, and installed on, your ASA.

Click in the details pane of the Inventory page to start your upgrade. For more information, see "Upgrading ASA and ASDM Images" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Export List of Devicses and Services

You can now export a list of the devices and services on the Inventorypage to a comma-separated value (.csv) file. From there, you can open the file in a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel to sort and filter the items in your list.

For more information, see "Exporting the Change Log to a CSV File" in Managing FTD with Cisco Defense Orchestrator".

ASA Configuration Restore

You can now return an ASA to one of its previously saved configurations. This is a convenient way to remove a configuration change that had unexpected or undesired results. Choose the ASA configuration you want to restore, CDO shows you a comparison of that configuration and the last configuration saved to memory, and if you are satisfied that you are restoring the desired configuration you can restore it.

For more information, see "Restoring ASA Configurations" in Managing ASA with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.

Change Request Management.

You can now associate a change request and its business justification, opened in a separate ticketing system, with an event in the Change Log. Change request management allows you to create a change request in CDO, identify it with a unique name, enter a description of the change, and associate the change request with change log events. You can later search the Change Log for the change request name.

For more information, see "Change Request Management" in Managing FTD with Cisco Defense Orchestrator.