FAQs
If your question is not answered here, ask on the DevNet Sandbox community forum.
Cost and support
How much does DevNet Sandbox cost?
Nothing. The Cisco DevNet team provides and runs the Sandboxes for the developer community at no cost. There is no license to buy, no trial period, and no Cisco support contract required to reserve one.
The one place a support contract does come up is the VPN client. Cisco Secure Client requires an active support contract to download. If you do not have one, use OpenConnect instead, covered in Connecting to Your Sandbox.
What support do I get?
The community provides best-effort support through the DevNet Sandbox community forum. The DevNet team and other users answer questions there.
There is no SLA and no guaranteed response time, and Sandbox support is not connected to any paid Cisco support offering.
How do I get help?
Use the Get help entry point on the catalog, on a Sandbox's detail page, or on Reservations, or post directly on the forum.
Always include:
- What you expected to happen.
- What happened instead.
- The steps you took.
If you have a reservation open, Get help prefills those headings along with the Sandbox name, environment URL, status, and start time. Copy that block into your post. Sandbox names are often near-identical, and the environment URL is what identifies yours. See How to ask for help.
Reservations
Do always on Sandboxes need a reservation?
Yes. Both types need one.
The difference is what the reservation does. For an on demand Sandbox, it builds a private environment for you. For an always on Sandbox, the environment is already running, and the reservation generates your credentials and scopes them to your session. Several Sandboxes issue credentials dynamically per reservation, and those credentials exist nowhere else.
Always on reservations are quick, but not instant. Expect a few minutes.
What is the difference between always on and on demand?
An always on Sandbox runs continuously and serves other users too, so admin access is restricted and it is ready in a few minutes. Use Launch to skip the duration step.
Stack Automation builds an on demand Sandbox for your reservation. It is private to you, and gives you full admin access to its devices. It takes longer to provision.
See Introduction for the full comparison.
Can I break an always on Sandbox for other people?
Yes. Understand this before you make changes.
Always on Sandboxes serve many users and do not isolate each reservation. Changes to device management settings, credentials, or interface configuration affect everyone else using that Sandbox at the same time, and it is possible to break the management plane so nobody can reach it.
If your work involves changing configuration rather than reading it, reserve an on demand Sandbox instead. You get a private environment where nothing you do reaches anyone else.
If you find a Sandbox that someone left in a broken state, report it on the community forum so the team can reset it.
How long can I reserve a Sandbox for?
It depends on the Sandbox. Each one has its own default session length and its own maximum. There is no global limit.
Check the Sandbox's detail page. The panel shows Session length, and the Instructions section states the default and the maximum.
Can I extend a reservation?
Some Sandboxes allow it. As a reservation gets close to expiring, its card on Reservations shows an Extend action with the increment that Sandbox permits.
Each Sandbox sets whether you can extend and by how much.
Can I reserve more than one Sandbox at a time?
No. You can hold one active reservation at a time, across all Sandboxes, not one per Sandbox.
A reservation in an error state still counts. If you are blocked but believe you have nothing running, check Reservations for a failed or stuck reservation and end it.
How do I view or end my reservation?
Go to Reservations. It shows your active reservation's status, time remaining, and start and end times, along with your recent reservations. End reservation cancels it and releases the environment immediately.
Can I save my Sandbox configuration for later?
No. Sandboxes do not keep state between reservations. Export anything you want to keep, such as configs, scripts, and captures, before the window ends.
Accounts and Stack Automation
What account do I need?
A Cisco.com account. Use a Cisco Connection Online (CCO) account if you are an external user, or a Cisco Employee Connection (CEC) account if you work at Cisco. DevNet Sandbox does not accept other sign-in providers.
It is the same account that you use for Learning Labs, the Cisco DevNet community, and Stack Automation. If you need one, create a Cisco account. It is free.
What is the difference between the DevNet catalog and Stack Automation?
They are two parts of the same experience.
The DevNet Sandbox catalog on developer.cisco.com is where you discover Sandboxes, read what they provide, reserve one, and manage the reservation.
Stack Automation is the platform that provisions and runs the environment itself. It is where your credentials, setup instructions, and the environment's live status are.
You reserve on developer.cisco.com, then Open sandbox takes you to Stack Automation.
Do I need a separate Stack Automation account?
No. Both use the same Cisco.com account.
Can I reserve directly from Stack Automation instead?
Yes. It is not the path these docs describe, but it works. Starting from the catalog lets you compare Sandboxes and read what they provide before committing to anything.
Access and connectivity
Where do I find my access details?
In Stack Automation, on the environment's Access Details section. Get there from Reservations in the navigation bar on developer.cisco.com, then Open sandbox on your reservation.
The same details are in the "[Active] Access your sandbox now" email, under Access details.
Stack Automation generates credentials per reservation, and they stop working when the reservation ends.
Why do I need a VPN?
Most on demand Sandboxes run on private IP space. The VPN gives you an encrypted tunnel and temporarily routes Sandbox traffic through it, so you can reach devices by IP as if they were on your local network. Web UIs, SSH, RDP, and API calls all work normally.
Always on Sandboxes are reachable without one. The Sandbox's Instructions section states how to reach that particular Sandbox.
I cannot ping an always on Sandbox's devices. Is something wrong?
No. Always on Sandboxes block ICMP (ping) as a security measure, so a failed ping does not mean that a device is unreachable. Try a protocol the device actually offers instead, for example its web UI, SSH, or API, as listed in the Sandbox's Instructions section.
On demand Sandboxes, reached over VPN, allow ping.
Are there quotas beyond the one-reservation limit?
The one active reservation at a time limit is the one that applies to you directly. Beyond that, each on demand Sandbox has its own slot count, which is why a Sandbox can show At capacity, and each Sandbox sets its own maximum session length and extension rules.
Where can I download the VPN client?
Cisco Secure Client is the recommended client, from the Cisco Software Download portal. Search for Secure Client (AnyConnect), the name under which Cisco lists it. Downloading it requires an active Cisco support contract.
OpenConnect is an open-source alternative that works with DevNet Sandbox and needs no support contract. It is not a Cisco product, so Cisco does not support it.
Setup for both is in Connecting to Your Sandbox.
Secure Client does not let me type the VPN endpoint. What am I missing?
The control that lists saved VPN connections is also a text field. Click into it, type the full endpoint including the port, and press Enter. There is no separate "add connection" button.
Is my Sandbox private?
On demand Sandboxes are private to your reservation, with full admin access. Always on Sandboxes serve other users at the same time, so admin access is restricted.
My reservation is confirmed but I cannot reach anything yet. What is happening?
Stack Automation is still setting up the environment. The Reservations page shows Provisioning and keeps Open sandbox disabled until the environment is ready.
How long this takes depends on the Sandbox. Always on Sandboxes are usually ready in a few minutes. On demand Sandboxes take longer, because Stack Automation builds the environment for you. The Sandbox's Instructions section says how many setup steps it runs.
Errors
My reservation shows an error. What do I do?
It depends on which one:
- Launch failed or Stopped working: end the reservation and reserve again.
- Termination failed: post about it on the community forum so the Sandbox team can remove the environment.
Full details for each are in Errors and Troubleshooting.
A Sandbox shows "At capacity" or "Maintenance". What now?
At capacity means every slot for that Sandbox is in use. Try again shortly, or check whether the product has an always on version.
Maintenance means the Sandbox is temporarily offline. The portal blocks new reservations, but reservations already running keep going.
Next steps
- Getting Started: reserve a Sandbox and make your first API call.
- Reserve a Sandbox: the full reservation walkthrough.
- Errors and Troubleshooting: what each reservation error means and what to do about it.