Cisco Systems 3750E Event Service, What You Should Know About the CNS IDs and Device Hostnames

Chapter 4 Configuring Cisco IOS CNS Agents

Understanding Cisco Configuration Engine Software

Event Service

The Cisco Configuration Engine uses the Event Service for receipt and generation of configuration events. The event agent is on the switch and facilitates the communication between the switch and the event gateway on the Configuration Engine.

The Event Service is a highly capable publish-and-subscribe communication method. The Event Service uses subject-based addressing to send messages to their destinations. Subject-based addressing conventions define a simple, uniform namespace for messages and their destinations.

NameSpace Mapper

The Configuration Engine includes the NameSpace Mapper (NSM) that provides a lookup service for managing logical groups of devices based on application, device or group ID, and event.

Cisco IOS devices recognize only event subject-names that match those configured in Cisco IOS software; for example, cisco.cns.config.load. You can use the namespace mapping service to designate events by using any desired naming convention. When you have populated your data store with your subject names, NSM changes your event subject-name strings to those known by Cisco IOS.

For a subscriber, when given a unique device ID and event, the namespace mapping service returns a set of events to which to subscribe. Similarly, for a publisher, when given a unique group ID, device ID, and event, the mapping service returns a set of events on which to publish.

What You Should Know About the CNS IDs and Device Hostnames

The Cisco Configuration Engine assumes that a unique identifier is associated with each configured switch. This unique identifier can take on multiple synonyms, where each synonym is unique within a particular namespace. The event service uses namespace content for subject-based addressing of messages.

The Configuration Engine intersects two namespaces, one for the event bus and the other for the configuration server. Within the scope of the configuration server namespace, the term ConfigID is the unique identifier for a device. Within the scope of the event bus namespace, the term DeviceID is the CNS unique identifier for a device.

Because the Configuration Engine uses both the event bus and the configuration server to provide configurations to devices, you must define both ConfigID and Device ID for each configured switch.

Within the scope of a single instance of the configuration server, no two configured switches can share the same value for ConfigID. Within the scope of a single instance of the event bus, no two configured switches can share the same value for DeviceID.

ConfigID

Each configured switch has a unique ConfigID, which serves as the key into the Configuration Engine directory for the corresponding set of switch CLI attributes. The ConfigID defined on the switch must match the ConfigID for the corresponding switch definition on the Configuration Engine.

The ConfigID is fixed at startup time and cannot be changed until the device restarts, even if the switch hostname is reconfigured.

Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Switch Software Configuration Guide

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