RESTCONF Integration Overview for CNC and NSO

Objective

With Crosswork Assurance 25.7, a RESTCONF API allows orchestration and management of performance measurement of a given network segment. Depending on your needs, Crosswork Assurance offers two types of measurement methods:

• Hardware timestamps via Assurance Sensor Modules, which have highest precision
• Hardware-assisted timestamps on Sensor Control with specific network cards (i350) with high precision
• Software timestamps via Assurance Sensor Agents, which have lesser precision

Performance Measurements Using Assurance Sensor Modules

What You Need

• Crosswork Assurance
  • Crosswork Assurance platform (SaaS or On-prem)
  • Sensor Management (Hardware Orchestration)
  • Sensor Collector (CSV)
• Sensor Control
• Sensor Modules (Assurance SFP or Module)

Through RESTCONF requests, Crosswork Assurance can orchestrate performance monitoring on Sensor SFPs or Sensor Modules to monitor the network under test. The probe controller (Sensor Control) then sends the performance metrics back up to Crosswork Assurance platform where they are available via a gNMI stream.

Performance Measurements Using Assurance Sensor Agents

What You Need

• Crosswork Assurance
  • Crosswork Assurance platform (SaaS or On-Prem)
  • Sensor Management (Software Orchestration)
  • Sensor Collector (Gateway)
  • Sensor Agent actuate (TWAMP and ICMP/UDP echo transceiver)

Through RESTCONF requests, Crosswork Assurance orchestrates performance monitoring on Sensor Agents to monitor the network under test. The Sensor Agents then send the performance metrics through the Sensor Collector up to Crosswork Assurance platform where they are available via a gNMI stream.

RESTCONF Integration with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator

Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) serves as the RESTCONF client that calls Crosswork Assurance for orchestration of performance monitoring. Through alert policies and RESTCONF notifications, NSO can receive notifications on specific defined conditions to which it can react.

For NSO configuration, see Set up NSO with Crosswork Assurance 25.7.

RESTCONF Integration with Cisco Crosswork Network Controller

Cisco Crosswork Network Controller (CNC) serves as the RESTCONF client that calls Crosswork Assurance for orchestration of performance monitoring on configured L3VPN services. CNC also subscribes to corresponding gNMI streams for configured services. This stream contains select performance metrics from the orchestrated monitoring sessions for visualisation within CNC.