Zero touch provisioning

Zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) allows you to provision new ONIE-enabled devices in your network automatically, without manual intervention. When you physically connect ONIE-enabled devices to the network and boot with a default configuration, it attempts to upgrade the software image automatically and installs a configuration file from the network.

ONIE-enabled devices use information that you configure on a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server to locate the necessary software image and configuration files on the network or to find the script to execute. If you do not configure the DHCP server to provide this information, the ONIE-enabled device boots with the default software image and configuration.

Features

• Quick deployment in large-scale environments
• Automation solution to reduce errors and save time
• Image and file system validation and standardization
• Advanced scripting capabilities for tailoring the boot configuration
• Connectivity validation and topology based auto-provisioning for multiple ONIE-enabled devices

How does it work?

Once the ONIE-enabled device is powered on, it uses standard network protocols to fetch everything it needs for provisioning. It can send a DHCP query to get the proper IP address for connectivity and management, use BootP/TFTP to get the right ONIE image, then another TFTP request to get the right configuration file based on the application profile.

Once the network administrator sets up the IP address scheme via the DHCP server, and the ONIE image and configuration files on the TFTP server, they can effectively roll out tens, hundreds, and thousands of ONIE-enabled switches in this way — all fully-customizable and without the time-consuming and error-prone manual configuration process.