Using

Learn about how to use the orchestration component of IBM® Cloud Pak for Network Automation, including its tools, UI, and Site Planner.

Logging in to the IBM Cloud Pak console
Log in to the IBM Cloud Pak® console to access IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation features and features of any other IBM Cloud® Paks that are installed on the same cluster.
Navigating and customizing the IBM Cloud Pak console
Access IBM Cloud Paks and administrative functions from the IBM Cloud Pak console. You can also customize the IBM Cloud Pak UI to your requirements.
Accessing metrics in the Grafana UI
Use the Grafana UI to access the operational metrics dashboard for IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation.
Monitoring operational metrics
IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation exposes operational metrics, which provide insight into the state, health, and performance of your IBM Cloud Pak environment. You can monitor these metrics in the Grafana UI.
Infrastructure keys
Infrastructure keys are a way of being able to pass sensitive key information, for example, SSH keys, around in instance properties (properties that are defined in the resource and assembly descriptors), without exposing their content. They are managed by the resource manager, Brent, which persists them encrypted in the database, and are not exposed north of Brent. Only their name is present in the instance properties, that is, the value of an instance property of type key is the name of an infrastructure key, which is substituted by Brent in real time before being passed down into the drivers.
Deploying the orchestration component
To develop, deploy, and operate the orchestration component within an operational environment requires a wide range of expertise, including network domain knowledge, expertise in third-party technology, and experience of the orchestration component.
Intents overview
Intents model the target state of a service. For example, when you create an assembly instance in the network automation UI, an intent is requested to create that instance. The system determines the steps that must be run to bring the assembly instance to the created state.
Orchestration tools
You can access the orchestration component by using a GUI or by using APIs.
Network automation UI
Use the network automation UI to create, operate, and delete service instances that the orchestration component manages.
Creating a VNF
The orchestration component includes several tools for the development of new VNF and Network Services.
Network service design
A Network Service can be defined as a composition of resources (like VNFs) connected together constructing a coherent service function. On highest level a network service corresponds to an orderable entity that provides end users with an end-to-end service chain.
Behavior-driven tests
The orchestration component includes behavior-driven test tools. You can use these tools to automatically run VNF and Network Services though their entire lifecycle.
Operations
One of the main advantages of the orchestration component is that it has inbuilt behavior driven test tools. This allows you to automatically run VNF and Network Services though their entire lifecycle.
Site Planner
Site Planner enables you to model your network infrastructure resources and to represent the desired state of your network, rather than its operational state. It is based on the open source application, NetBox.
Using LMCTL
LMCTL is a command-line client that you can use to work with IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation environments.
Automating deployment of SD-WANs in the Wired portal
Use the IBM Cloud Pak for Network Automation Wired portal to automate the deployment of SD-WANs so that your branch offices can connect to your cloud environment. You can use the portal to onboard cloud accounts, create VPCs and virtual networks (VNets), configure connections to SD-WAN controllers, and view the connection statuses of your cloud services.