Cisco revamps key DevNet sandboxes

“The reservable instances can be all yours for up to 4 days with the small caveat that it takes about 60 minutes to have all the components of the sandbox come online. They are currently running version 2.3.7.4 of Catalyst Center and there is also a Cisco ISE server available if you want to deploy [software defined access] fabrics.”

New CI/CD pipeline sandbox

One new sandbox from Cisco is dedicated to building and testing automation software using continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

“I have been advocating for using CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure automation and programmability for a while,” wrote Iliesiu, who ran a workshop on the topic at Ansible Fest in Denver earlier this year.

During the workshop, attendees followed a guide on how to use GitLab together with Ansible, Cisco pyATS, Cisco CML and Cisco NX-OS to build a functional CI/CD pipeline for infrastructure automation, Iliesiu stated. The sandbox Cisco used for that event is now publicly available in the DevNet sandbox catalog together with the lab that describes how to build and use these pipelines.

“We have up to 15 of these sandboxes available at all times for up to 5 days per reservation. Go ahead and give them a try and witness the magic of using network automation with CI/CD pipelines,” Iliesiu wrote.

Meraki sandboxes rebuilt

Cisco’s Meraki sandboxes have been rebuilt from scratch to boost scalability, according to Lliesiu.