Description

Network staff is responsible for managing each device on the network according to best industry practices and for reducing device downtime. This course provides an overview of some of the tools for monitoring and troubleshooting Cisco devices. SNMP basic components and operation are explained. A graphing tool can use SNMP to periodically poll an SNMP agent (for example, a router) and graph the values. Syslog is another useful protocol that allows a network device to send event notification messages to a centralized logging server. The course also explains the NetFlow protocol. The NetFlow protocol creates an environment and the tools to understand network traffic and how it is flowing.
When a Cisco router boots, it performs a series of steps in a particular order. At several points during the process, the router makes a decision about the next step to take. Knowledge of the boot sequence can be of great help when troubleshooting a Cisco router and also when adjusting its configuration. Carefully managing Cisco IOS images and configuration files reduces device downtime and maintains best practices. Cisco IOS image files contain the Cisco IOS Software that is required for a Cisco device to operate. The device configuration files contain a set of user-defined configuration commands that customize the functionality of a Cisco device. This course describes the steps in the router boot sequence and the procedures and commands that are required to manage Cisco IOS images, configuration files, and devices on the network.
This course concludes with an explanation of the universality of Cisco IOS images and the concept behind licensing. The Cisco IOS Software Activation feature is an orchestrated collection of processes and components to activate Cisco IOS Software feature sets by obtaining and validating Cisco software licenses. With the Cisco IOS Software Activation feature, you can enable licensed features and register licenses.