Learn to onboard, provision devices in Cisco's SD-WAN book

One aspect of software-defined WAN, or SD-WAN, deployments that often trips up networking teams is the process of onboarding devices and understanding how devices connect into the control plane nodes. In addition, many teams don't know what to expect when these devices are officially on the network.

SD-WAN deployments, including onboarding and provisioning processes, are like night and day compared to traditional WAN deployments. Organizations can adopt pre-built SD-WAN configuration templates rather than deal with the traditional, manual deployment processes, according to authors Jason Gooley and Dustin Shuemann. Cisco's SD-WAN book, Cisco Software-Defined Wide Area Networks: Designing, Deploying and Securing Your Next Generation WAN with Cisco SD-WAN, by Gooley, Schuemann, Dana Yanch and John Curran explores templates, deployments and more.

Below is an excerpt from the SD-WAN book: Chapter 4, "Onboarding and Provisioning." This chapter explores the ins and outs of SD-WAN configuration templates -- including how to design and deploy them -- as well as automatic provisioning techniques and how to onboard devices.

Jason Gooley

Before readers explore the chapter, they should have a foundational understanding of network protocols, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and DNS, as well as how Plug and Play and zero-touch provisioning work, Schuemann said.

Dustin Schuemann

Software-defined anything is new for most people in the networking industry, Gooley said, so it will take a mindset change for SD-WAN to become as standard as traditional WANs. This is especially true as many networking professionals are used to doing everything through the command-line interface and are hesitant to move away from what they know to fully embrace software programs for network management and monitoring.

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Yet, learning the technology isn't the most complicated part of this process; it's the mindset change network pros must have and getting out of their comfort zones. That change can free network pros to enable the software to accomplish tasks on their behalf and integrate it with other business areas. In the end, software can simplify the day to day of teams and enable them to focus on more business-critical projects.

Cisco's SD-WAN book can prepare readers for more than potential certification exams, Schuemann said, as it can help any networking pros looking to learn more about SD-WAN design, deployment and more.