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Marcelo Reis edited this page Sep 4, 2024 · 5 revisions

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and its vManage graphical user interface provide a great deal of simplification in deploying and managing WAN fabrics.

However, during different phases of a project (e.g. POC, migration, operations), a number of tasks are just better fit to the command-line, or as programability platform adapters (Ansible collections, Terraform providers, Python libraries). Those interfaces provide levels of flexibility and composability that would be extremely difficult to match with a GUI environment.

Looking at cloud providers for instance, they all offer Web graphical interfaces as well as CLI tools, Ansible collections, Terraform providers and SDKs. Which further reinforces our observation that it is important to have all those user interfaces available when managing infrastructure at scale.

Sastre is to Catalyst SD-WAN vManage as AWS-cli is to AWS Web console.

Through first hand experience during SD-WAN deployment projects and POCs, and input from many customers that we interact with worldwide, the following are the main challenges they face when limited to just vManage GUI:

Transfer configuration from one vManage to another

  • POC/Lab to production, on-prem to cloud, etc.

Bulk configuration changes

  • Copy, rename, delete, etc.

Status and statistics across multiple devices

  • Comparing BFD session state for all devices at a site

Programmability

  • SDK, Ansible collection, in order to build larger workflows and/or integrate into other applications

Main Features And Use-Cases Supported by Sastre

Backup, restore and delete configuration items

  • Tags and regular expressions provide flexible selection options
  • Dry-run, dependency resolution and diff check

Template/config-group device attach and detach

Display and export configuration, state, statistics, alarms, events

Custom reports and diff comparison

  • Pre-post (change window) diff validation

Bulk template rename, copy and password update

Certificate state management

Template reference analysis

Pre-20.1 to post 20.1 configuration migration

Roadmap

Current Release 1.24 (June 2024)

  • vManage 20.12 and 20.13 support
  • CSDL Certification (CSDL ID 244180)

Release 1.25 (September 2024)

  • vManage 20.14 support
  • Rendering of device attach values via yaml config file

Release 1.26 (November 2024)

  • vManage 20.15 support
  • Read-the-docs documentation
  • Mac/Windows signed installers

Release 1.27 (January 2025)

  • API explorer

Getting Support

Support questions can be sent to sastre-support@cisco.com.

We aim to reply within 1 business day (North America Eastern timezone).

Training