Demonstration Guide

Cisco dCloud

Cisco IOx for Edge Compute Lab v1

Created in Partnership with Solutions Readiness Engineers

Last Updated: 17-October-2019

About This Lab

This guide for the preconfigured lab includes:

About This Lab

Requirements

About This Solution

Topology

Get Started

Scenario 1. Installing, Activating and Starting an Edge Application

Scenario 2. Health Monitoring of Application state & Usage Statistics

What’s Next?

Limitations

In this Cisco IOx® lab we will use NGinX WebServer as an example Edge Application to host and run on Edge
devices. However, development of the application itself is not covered in this lab. We will use a pre-packaged
application, which will be installed on the IOx Sandbox instance.
To learn how you can develop your own Edge Applications, refer to the ‘What’s Next?’ section of this guide and
read more about developing custom applications which can be hosted on IOx compatible devices.

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Requirements
The table below outlines the requirements for this preconfigured demonstration.

Required Optional
Laptop Cisco AnyConnect®

About This Solution

Cisco’s IOx is an Edge Application hosting and management platform, designed with IoT in mind. Several IoT
Edge devices by Cisco run IOx and leverage many powerful features of Edge Computing. IOx provides powerful
services for rapid and reliable integration with IoT sensors as well as with cloud infrastructures. IOx also
leverages the secure connectivity feature from the underlying platform images and extends it to the applications
that are running on it.

Harness IoT Data, Deliver Insights and Drive Digital Business Forward

By bringing application execution capability to the source of IoT data, customers overcome challenges with high
volumes of data and the need for automated, near-real-time system responsiveness.

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Edge applications offer customers and ecosystem partners the ability to transform IoT sensor data and perform
control functions within the distributed network infrastructure. With the support of IOx resident on routers,
switches, and compute modules, the distributed IoT network, functions as the compute environment for edge
applications. With the secure connectivity services and common application framework offered by, IOx and
Edge applications, customers have delivered business outcomes rapidly with their IoT initiatives.
Key features of IOx include:
• Runs along IOS as well as IOS-XE compatible devices
• Capable of hosting Virtual Machines as well as Containers
• Docker tooling support for developers
• Services such as GPS and Secure Storage, provisioned for Edge Applications
• On-premise UI for application monitoring and management of resources, called as Local Manager
• Is supported on a variety of Cisco IoT hardware including routers, switches, and compute devices

Cisco supported IoT Edge Devices for IOx

Cisco’s IOx is supported on a variety of IoT devices such as routers, switches or compute devices. Some of the
devices which support IOx are listed below. For a complete list of supported devices refer to:
https://developer.cisco.com/docs/iox/#!platform-information

In this lab we will look at the Local Manager UI and access the Edge to manage and monitor a sample
application. To access the Local Manager UI we will use a Windows Workstation which acts as a client to
manage the Edge applications for various functions.
An Edge device can be any IOx compatible device, however, for this lab we use an IOx Sandbox instance for
more flexibility and accessibility. Actual features and resources provided by an Edge device would vary
depending on the underlying device that is hosting the application.

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Topology
This content includes preconfigured users and components to illustrate the scripted scenarios and features of
the solution. Most components are fully configurable with predefined administrative user accounts. In the
topology below, we have a Windows workstation that is used to access the IOx Edge device (i.e. the IOx
sandbox instance in this case). Local Manager UI on the IOx sandbox is used to manage the Edge applications.

dCloud Topology

Physical Topology

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Logical Topology
In real world scenarios, IOx CAF Sandbox could be any of the Cisco IoT Edge device running IOx. The logical
topology in actual implementations would look something like this:

Equipment Details

Name Description Host Name (FQDN) IP Address Username Password

IOx CAF Cisco’s IOx Cisco Application Iox-caf- 198.18.135.162 developer C1sco12345
Sandbox Framework (CAF) sandbox.dcloud.cisco.com
AD1 Active Directory, DNS, AD FS ad1.dcloud.cisco.com 198.18.133.1 administrator C1sco12345
Iot- Windows 7 Wkst1.dcloud.cisco.com 198.18.133.36 admin C1sco12345
workstation

Get Started

Follow the steps to schedule a session of the content and configure your presentation environment.
1. Initiate your dCloud session. [Show Me How]

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NOTE: It may take up to 10 minutes for your session to become active.

2. Once the session is up and running, it will be listed under the Sessions tab. Click View to verify the
topology and access credentials of every component by clicking on every component individually.

3. For best performance, connect to the workstation with Cisco AnyConnect VPN [Show Me How] and the
local RDP client on your laptop. [Show Me How]
• Iot-workstation: 198.18.133.36, Username: admin, Password: C1sco12345

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Scenario 1. Installing, Activating and Starting an Edge Application

Value Proposition: IOx Local Manager UI is an essential and convenient way of managing the Edge device right
at the edge. While in many cases bulk management is preferred and commonly used, in many cases Local
Manager comes in handy to manage the applications on the device. Most commonly Local Manager will be an
essential tool for developers who are developing a new application and verifying it’s functioning at very short
intervals. Local Manager is an extremely light weight interface but provides many features such as:
● Management of Edge Applications
● Usage statistics for Memory
● CPU and Storage
● Monitoring and configuring Systems settings and Network configurations
● Troubleshooting of the Edge device and the applications
● Logging Management & more

IOx Edge devices come with an on-premise UI for management and monitoring of Edge Applications. This UI is
referred as Local Manager. It can be used to Install an application and activate or start it. In this lab we will use
this UI for all application management. Activation is a state where the Edge application is assigned the required
resources, before actually starting the application.

Logging in Local Manager

To access the Local Manager, we will RDP into the Windows workstation machine.

Steps

1. RDP into the Windows Workstation at 198.18.133.36 using:

• Login = admin
• Password = C1sco12345
2. Open the Chrome browser with URL https://198.18.135.162:8443. If a warning message appears, click
Advanced and proceed to the indicated page. You can also click on the Cisco IOx Local Manager
bookmark under the bookmarks bar.

3. If the following pop-ups appear, click on Advanced and Proceed to localhost (unsafe).

4. Log into the Local Manager using:

• Login = developer
• Password = C1sco12345

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5. Once logged in the Local Manager, the UI will look like this.

Installing an Edge Application

For this lab, we will use a lightweight NGINX Web Server. For convenience, a prepackaged NGINX Web Server
has been downloaded and stored in the Downloads directory on the Windows workstation. The name of the
TAR file that is stored in the Downloads directory is NGinX_for_IOx.tar.

Steps

1. While in the Local Manager, click Add New under the Applications tab.

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2. A small window like this will pop-up. In the Application Id field, enter a name for the Application. In this
sample it is named NGinX_for_IOx.

3. Now click Choose File, which will open the Downloads directory in Windows Explorer. Select the
NGinX_for_IOx.tar file and then click Open.

4. Now click OK. Local Manager will start uploading the Application.

5. Once uploaded, a notification will appear. Click OK and the Application will be listed under the Applications
tab as shown here.

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Activating the Application

Once uploaded, the Application needs to be activated in IOx. Activation is a phase where the IOx framework
internally reserves and assigns the resources to the Application. To do so, IOx looks at an internal file packaged
in the Application package and allocates the resources respectively.

Steps

1. To activate the NGinX Web Server, click the Activate option as shown here.

2. Once clicked, a new page will appear with options to configure the resources and networking parameters
for the Application. The new page will look like this.

3. In this lab, we will change the TCP port mapping under the Network Configuration, to 8080. This will run
the Web Server on port 8080. To do so, click the edit option and then click Port Mapping.

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4. A new window will pop-up. In this window, change the Port Mapping option to Custom, and then set a
value of 8080 in the External Port(s) field. Now click OK, and the previous screen will appear. Again, click
OK on this screen and a notification will appear. Click OK on this notification window as well.

5. Now click Activate under the Resources tab. IOx will start assigning the resources.

6. Once activated, the Resources tab will now have a toggled option to Deactivate.

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7. Click the Applications tab at the top and see the orange ACTIVATED state of the Application.

Starting the Application

Once the application is Activated, it can now be Started on the Edge device. This will actually run the
Application on the IOx device.

Steps

1. Click Start under the NGinX_for_IOx Application. IOx will now start the application and the state of
Application will change to RUNNING in green. The option under the Application will also toggle to Stop.

2. To verify that the NGinX Web Server is running, open a new tab in Chrome browser, and then navigate to
http://198.18.135.162:8080, or just click the Welcome to nginx! bookmark under the bookmarks bar.

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3. The webpage will load with the message, Welcome to nginx!

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Scenario 2. Health Monitoring of Application state & Usage Statistics

Value Proposition: Local Manager also provides the ability to monitor the state of an application and the
resources used by the application. It also allows you to download the application logs which in turn help the
developers in debugging and enhancing the Edge applications.

In this scenario, we will navigate the Local Manager to monitor and learn about the usage statistics and health
of the Edge Application, as well as the Edge device itself.

Steps

1. In Local Manager, click the Docker Layers tab at the top and then look at the Layers of the NGinX Web
Server application. Explore the features provided by Docker tooling on this screen, which is extremely
helpful and essential for the developers writing new Edge applications and testing them on these devices.

2. Click the System Info tab and then monitor a variety of different statistics about the Application as well as
the device. This provides great deal of control and ability to make decisions for the operators who are
managing these devices. These details could help the operators or developers, manage the resource
usage, performance expectations, or to configure basic settings like DNS and NTP parameters.

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3. Click the System Setting tab and then look at the network or Interface settings on the device. These details
come in handy, if the operators are troubleshooting any network related issues on the device or for a
particular application running on the device.

4. Click the System Troubleshoot option and then monitor the Events, Errors, Logs or TechSupport
Information. Various logging information is also available for Download under this option. With the help of
these logs, an application developer can very easily analyze the problem and fix it in a quick and optimized
way. Logs also help the operator in explaining the behavior of a device or an application to the technical
support teams, which in turn can provide feedback or fixes to a problem.

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What’s Next?
Check out the Cisco IOx data sheet:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/cloud-systems-management/iox/datasheet-c78-
736767.html
Get Full IOx DevNet Documentation:
https://developer.cisco.com/docs/iox/
Get Hands-on Learning with DevNet Learning Labs for IoT and IOx:
https://developer.cisco.com/learning/tracks/iot

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