Building Your Own Wi-Fi Automation Lab

Guided lab exercises to install a lab stack on your own laptop for automating configuration and operational tasks.

Solutions to be explored includes:

• Installation of an Ubuntu server on VirtualBox, including a conatiner platform (Docker or Kubernetes) to be used for the other exercises.
• Exploring YANG-Suite. Including installation as a container on the Ubuntu VM
• Exploring Grafana, graphing streaming telemetry from WLC. Including installation of the TIG stack (Telegraf/InfluxDB/Grafana) as containers on the Ubuntu VM
• Exploring Ansible and some simple playbooks you can use as building blocks. Including installation of Ansible on the Ubuntu VM
• Installing and exploring Postman on your own laptop. Some deeper eploration of YANG models of the C9800 using Postman, and also briefly touching the Wi-Fi APIs of other vendors
• Installing VS Code and configuring it for streamlined Ansible automation and Python automation
• Day 2 will be dedicated to deeper exploration of one or more of the topics of your choice, there will be more exercises than you have time to do, so just select a topic to dig into, and do the rest at  your own pace when you get home :)

The lab automations and other exercises will be using a Cisco 9800-CL and an Ubuntu VM running on your own laptop. I will bring some Cisco APs (CW9162I) which Cisco will generously sponsor so each participant can keep it after completion of the lab. I will also bring a server which runs a 9800, a C8000v and some Ubuntu VMs that can be used in case you do not get the VMs to work on your own laptop.

Prerequisites:

• Windows laptop with administrative privileges
• Cisco account, with access to download WLC images (9800-CL, at https://software.cisco.com)
• Lab guide will be sent up-front, and will include some pre-lab exercises that will need to be completed before the deep dive (like installing VirtualBox etc)

Without these, parts of the deep dive might be difficult to complete, steps might differ severely, and I might not be able to help.

Note: This deep dive will obviously not be able to teach you how to master Python, Ansible or Grafana. But all the exercises will be created in a way that give you freedom to try it yourself if you are somewhat proficient in the language. And there will be solutions/suggestions for all excercises, so if you know nothing about any of the topics you will be able to do everything by just copy-pasting the examples, and study/explore them. It will be like a guided taste-menu of Wi-Fi automation.

Note 2: I am not the allmighty master-of-everything. But I know Wi-Fi, and I know enough of all the involved automation topics to be able to give you an introduction so you know where to dive deeper on your own. There will also probably be some people in the room or near vincinity that are experts on various subjects, so if you have some very difficult questions, I might be able to dig up an adult to help ;-)

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