Telemetry

Overview

The rXg supports two kinds of telemetry data ingestion, gRPC Streaming and MQTT. Both of these ingestion types are used to ingest and analyze radio metrics and client metrics, which are presented in Radio Metric Graphs and the KPI dialog types.

Setup

9800 WLC / gRPC

The CISCO 9800 Wireless Lan Controller uses gRPC to stream telemetry data.

rXg Setup

To enable gRPC streaming, create a WLAN Controller record for your WLAN Controller if there is not one already. If the rXg supports gRPC streaming for your WLAN controller, a gRPC port input field will be available. Put in the port number that you want the rXg to listen on for this device's gRPC telemetry data.

It is critically important to have the port that the rXg is listening for telemetry data on be exactly the same port that the WLC is configured to send the telemetry data TO. If you wish to stream telemetry data from multiple WLCs to one rXg, each WLC must stream to a different port on that rXg.

9800 Setup

Next you will need to configure the subscriptions in the CISCO 9800 WLC. The rXg provides a built in facility for building the exact script necessary to to create these.

First scroll to the right of your WLAN device record to access the Bootstrap view.

Then click on Show to present the telemetry bootstrap configuration script.

Next click on Copy to Clipboard to copy this configuration.

Next paste the configuration into your 9800 to run it:

(NOTE: This will update existing low numbered subscriptions if you have any)

Setup Confirmation

Next you may be wondering if your rXg is receiving the data. Here are a couple of easy ways to confirm.

Check Access Point Radios

The easiest, fastest and simplest way to check if your Telemetry data is streaming in is to check if any Access Point Radios are now present.

In the Network::Wireless view of your rXg, scroll down to the Access Point Radios Scaffold and see if there are new ones:

Health Check

Another way to check is to make a "Cisco Telemetry Health Check" widget. In order to do this, setup a new custom dashboard with the Cisco Telemetry health check widget on it. Widgets and dashboards and dashboard configuration is covered in the archives -> reports section of this manual, but here is an example of configuring such a widget.

Here is what the widget will look like when the data is being received.

NOTE: You will not receive data for client_oper_data_common_oper_data, client_oper_data_dot11_oper_data or client_oper_data_traffic_stats when no clients are associated.

Check on 9800

The best way to check the status of the subscriptions on the 9800 is with the command show telemetry ietf subscription all detail.

All the rest of the subscriptions should also say Connected and Subscription Validated as well.

Virtual Smart Zone / MQTT

The rXg can also receive telemetry data from the RUCKUS Virtual Smart Zone via MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport).

rXg Setup

To enable MQTT streaming, find or create a WLAN Controller record for your vSZ. Input a telemetry_username and telemetry_password for it.

From here, the rXg will be able to automatically configure streaming if you have config sync enabled, and it will automatically configure its local MQTT server to listen for telemetry from the vSZ.

The rXg will do this by finding or creating an active MQTT Server and associating it with this WLAN Controller via its MQTT Server attribute.

Setup Confirmation

Check Access Point Radios

The easiest, fastest and simplest way to check if your Telemetry data is streaming in is to check if any Access Point Radios are now present.

In the Network::Wireless view of your rXg, scroll down to the Access Point Radios Scaffold and see if there are new ones:

Check Subscription in vSZ

Another good place to check is in the vSZ itself. In Administration -> NB Streaming you should be able to find your subscription. When it is working, you should see Connected to the right in the list view.

User and Password should be the same as what you configured in the WLAN Controller record. System ID MUST be the id of the vSZ's WLAN Device record. You can find this by navigating to the "Show" view of the WLAN Device in the rXg admin UI, to the right of the link for the edit view, and scroll to the bottom of the information presented.

Check rXg's MQTT Server

In Services::Servers in the rXg, scroll down to MQTT Servers. Create or edit an MQTT Server with the following attributes:

active: true
tls version: 1.2
tls_port: 8883
infrastructure_devices: <YOUR vSZ>

In order for your rXg to have firewall visibility for the MQTT Server, you must have an active MQTT Server associated with your WLAN Controller via your WLAN Controller's MQTT Server attribute.

A note on the instrument_from_telemetry boolean

The instrument_from_telemetry boolean tells the rXg to create and update Access Points based on Telemetry data.

If you are running with config sync turned on, or monitoring turned on, your rXg will be able to import infrastructure updates through the regular infrastructure monitoring process, and you should have instrument_from_telemetry turned off.

If you are not using monitoring or config sync and are just receiving telemetry data from an infrastructure device, then you should have instrument_from_telemetry turned on.