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Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard

Onboarding an Externally-Managed Device

You can use Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard (IoT OD) Services on the IE3x00 switches operated locally using CLI, Local Manager, Cisco DNAC, or any other third-party management applications. To use the Cisco Services, apply a simple device configuration to the externally-managed IE3x00s. This adds the device to the IoT OD Application Manager inventory and then installs the required services.

Note: Externally-managed devices refers to devices that are managed using CLIs, Cisco Controllers, and other third-party systems. It excludes devices managed by the Edge Device Manager (EDM) service in IoT OD.

IoT OD does not support operations such as PnP based onboarding, management of device configuration, or firmware upgrades for IE devices. Instead, it adds IE as an externally-managed device to its inventory and supports only the application management functionality on these devices. Use the third-party device management applications to perform those functions on the externally-managed devices. This allows you to continue using the current configuration methods or tools. IoT OD manages only the IOx applications and Services on IE3x00 devices.

This page will guide you through onboarding externally-managed devices that are managed via CLI or Cisco Controller. Following is the process and workflow needed to onboard an externally-managed device. The steps are broken into the following units:

Step 1: Device Readiness–New Devices

To ready your device:

  1. Ensure IoT OD supports your device.
    IoT OD supports externally-managed IE3x00 - IE3400 (all models) and IE3300 (4GB/RAM models).
  2. Make sure the IE3x00 device has an SD card installed and is configured. For more information, see Configure and Enable IOx section in Device Configuration and Initiating Connection to OD.
  3. Cable the device securely. Use the power cable and uplink connection cables.
  4. For externally-managed IE3x00 switches, apply configuration command to establish websocket tunnel between the device and IoT OD. See below.
  5. Ensure that the device is configured such that it has an IP address and internet access (to connect to IoT OD). Device configuration might include interfaces and networking.
  6. Record the serial number and base product ID of the device for later use.

Step 2: Customer Site Readiness

For site security:

  1. Refer to Firewall Rules: Device and network requirements and verify you are using available IP addresses and network ports for your region (EU or US).
  2. Please ensure the site is ready for communication with IoT OD by allowing dashboard's public IP addresses through ACLs, etc.

Note: To simplify and start faster, open 9 IPs to communicate with the US or EU IoT OD clusters and port 443. At every given moment, only 3 IPs are used to communicate from each pool, but they can swap over time within the pool of 9.

For a complete list of IP addresses for each cluster, see the following links:

For more specific use cases, please refer to the Firewall Rules: Device and network requirements.

Step 3: Cloud infrastructure and Operations Dashboard Readiness

To begin onboarding an existing IE3x00 device into IoT OD:

  1. If the customer organization is not created on IoT OD, create the organization. Use the online instructions at us.ciscoiot.com or eu.ciscoiot.com based on the geographical location. In case of issues, use ask-sea-pm@cisco.com to contact support.
  2. Log in to the organization with a user who has appropriate permissions/roles to add devices or ask the Tenant Admin to create one.
    Note: When a new user is created on IoT OD, the target user will receive a personal invitation to access the cloud platform. Only a Tenant Admin can pre-define or assign a custom role to the user.
  3. Create a new Device Profile or select an existing Device Profile for the device as applicable. For details on creating, editing or deleting a device profile, see Device Profiles.
  4. Add the device in IoT OD as an externally-managed device. For details, see Device Inventory.

Step 4: Device Configuration and Initiating Connection to OD

For details, see sections on Configuring devices managed by CLI/Local Manager and Configuring Devices managed by DNAC in Device Configuration and Initiating Connection to OD.

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