Information About Network Hierarchy and Resource Management
Overview of Network Hierarchy
You can create a network hierarchy in Cisco SD-WAN Manager to represent the geographical locations of your network. Your network hierarchy can contain three types of nodes—regions, areas, and sites. The resource IDs assigned to the nodes help you identify where to apply configuration settings later.
By default, there is one node called global in the network hierarchy.
The network hierarchy has a predetermined hierarchy with three types of nodes:
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Region: It represents a region in a multiregion fabric-based Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN deployment. The Multi-Region Fabric feature provides the option to divide the architecture of the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN overlay network into multiple regional networks that operate distinctly from one another, and a central core-region network for managing inter-regional traffic.
You can create a region only if you enable the Multi-Region Fabric option in Cisco SD-WAN Manager. For complete information about the Multi-Region Fabric feature, see the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Multi-Region Fabric (also Hierarchical SD-WAN) Configuration Guide.
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Group/Area: A group, also called an area, is a logical grouping of nodes in a network hierarchy. You can group sites, regions, other areas, or any combination of these into an area.
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Site: A site is the lowest level of node or the leaf node in a network hierarchy. You cannot create a child node under a site. You can only associate devices to a site.
For complete information about creating and managing different nodes in a network hierarchy, see Manage a Network Hierarchy.
Overview of Resource Management
The resource manager in Cisco SD-WAN Manager manages the resource IDs, that is, region IDs and site IDs. It automatically generates a region ID for a region that you create on the page. Similarly, it generates a site ID for a site if you do not specify it.
You can assign a site ID and a region ID to a device. For complete information about assigning resource IDs to devices, see Assign Resource IDs to Devices.
If you upgrade from an earlier version of Cisco SD-WAN Manager to Cisco vManage Release 20.9.1, the resource manager in Cisco SD-WAN Manager automatically creates sites based on the site IDs of the existing devices in your setup. Sites are named as SITE_<id>. Cisco SD-WAN Manager displays these sites under the global node on the Network Hierarchy page. It also associates the existing devices with their sites in the network hierarchy.
Benefits of Network Hierarchy and Resource Management
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Automates the management of regions and sites.
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Saves the manual effort in an upgrade scenario when Cisco SD-WAN Manager discovers all your existing sites and displays them in the network hierarchy.
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Simplifies the onboarding and configuration of devices.
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Monitors and collects information about traffic flow.