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- [Instructor] We now want to take a look at APIs

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in both Cisco DNA Center and vManage.

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An API, or an application programming interface,

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is a building block that allows applications

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to communicate with one another.

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APIs, in their most basic sense,

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are simply building blocks of code or software

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that were created to save time for developers.

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Rather than starting from scratch trying to write code

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that will allow two applications to speak with one another,

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this allows developers to use pre-built APIs for this piece.

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This saves lots of development time and resources

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as opposed to having the need to specifically code

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for the communication between the applications.

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First, let's take a look at Cisco DNA Center.

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As we've already determined,

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DNA Center is the central piece

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for Cisco's intent-based network automation architecture.

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Intent APIs are referred to as northbound interfaces.

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These are REST APIs.

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REST standing for representational state transfer.

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This is very common in web services

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and it uses HTTP requests for data transfer,

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namely the GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE requests.

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These are used to simplify workflow creation in DNA Center

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so that we can easily automate multiple network actions.

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Think of the work it takes to configure a new SSID

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on your wireless LAN manually.

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You have to assign interface addresses, SSID settings,

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security parameters, VLAN assignment, and more.

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Intent APIs allow us to do that very, very simply

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through a graphical interface

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and to perform that on multiple devices at the same time.

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When we're logged into the DNA Center dashboard,

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a few common areas where we put intent APIs to use

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include creating and managing our sites,

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retrieving health information about our topology,

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managing our devices and users,

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device onboarding and provisioning,

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path trace commands, policy creation, and much, much more.

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In short, intent APIs are used to enforce the configurations

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and settings that we choose in DNA Center.

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We also have integration APIs, or westbound interfaces.

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These are used to integrate Cisco DNA Center

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with other platforms,

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specifically third-party IT service management solutions.

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For example, let's say you have a trouble ticketing system

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in place where employees can submit requests

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for assistance and support or they can report issues.

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Integration APIs allow DNA Center to interact

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and exchange information with these external IT systems,

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such as in-house ticketing software.

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And that's so that network data, events,

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and notifications can be pushed

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from DNA Center into this system.

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That means that you have the capability

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of allowing DNA Center to create tickets on its own.

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We've already looked at DNA Center's ability

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to detect problems early through machine learning.

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And so if DNA Center detects a device with a security issue

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or a problem with its built in assurance tools,

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through the integration APIs,

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it has the ability to automatically generate tickets

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with suggested remediation.

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So the information here can flow in both directions

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between these systems.

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We also have multi-vendor support, or southbound interfaces.

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This is accomplished

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through the Cisco DNA Center multi-vendor SDK,

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the software development kit.

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An API can be thought of as a much more simple piece

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of software than an SDK without all of the debugging support

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and other features that are found within SDKs.

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So an SDK can include multiple APIs.

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Cisco's DNA Center multi-vendor SDK allows users

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to manage non Cisco devices directly from DNA Center.

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At the time of this recording,

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this includes seeing basic device details

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and interface status

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and using common communication protocols with that device,

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such as SNMP, Telnet, SSH, and others.

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Now, this is an ongoing development area for Cisco

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and I'm certain that as new versions

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of DNA Center are released,

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this functionality will just continue to improve.

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And finally, we have events and notifications,

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the eastbound interfaces.

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These interfaces allow for external systems

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to take action against a device

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when an event or notification is triggered by DNA Center.

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For example, maybe there's a device in the network

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that is not running up-to-date software patches

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and DNA Center sends out a notification about that.

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A custom application in the network

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could use this notification to execute a software upgrade

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in order to bring the device back into compliance.

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vManage APIs are numerous,

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and they're grouped into seven main categories

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called resource collections.

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We have administrative APIs for managing users and groups,

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and also used for managing the local vManage server itself.

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Certificate management APIs, of course,

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used for key and certificate management.

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Configuration APIs for creating

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and editing device configurations.

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Device inventory APIs used to collect metrics about devices

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that are under the control of vManage.

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Monitoring APIs used for viewing

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device statistics and status.

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By the way, this is static monitoring data

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that's only updated every 10 minutes,

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but thankfully, we have real-time monitoring APIs

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for seeing up-to-date traffic and device information

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that's gathered by the second.

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And we have troubleshooting APIs,

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tools for remediating issues found within the network.

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To see a complete list of these APIs,

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you can check out the Cisco SD-WAN documentation

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where there is a very thorough command reference

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for vManage APIs.

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So that's a look at APIs

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in both Cisco DNA Center and Cisco vManage.