Data Sheet
Cisco Enterprise Service Automation
Cisco® Enterprise Service Automation reduces IT operational expenses by simplifying
and automating the processes involved in multibranch provisioning.
Product Overview
Cisco Enterprise Service Automation (ESA) helps IT organizations to automate and standardize IT processes
across the enterprise networks that align with both company and Cisco best practices. Through its GUI, ESA
provides intuitive ways for designing services for bringing up multiple branch networks in almost no time. It
essentially brings down the operational expenses of the IT organization by rapidly automating the processes
involved in branch provisioning and rolling out services.
Cisco Enterprise Service Automation aids with orchestration, automation of processes, and service chaining of
virtual and physical branches. It drastically reduces the time taken to provision multiple branches simultaneously
from what usually takes months to just minutes. ESA, along with Application Policy Infrastructure Controller
Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) and Cisco Prime™ Infrastructure, can design, provision, manage, and monitor the
hardware, the hosting platforms and the software services required for successfully getting a new branch up and
running. ESA workflows align with Information Technology Infrastructure Library processes, providing ways for
user-created network designs for initial service provisioning and service upgrades. It goes through an approval
process when there is change, automates the IP address assignments to the required components. It also
automates the supply of common network attributes for configuring the devices based on the region, location, or
type of branches. Being a process tool, ESA versions the configuration changes for audit and troubleshooting
purposes before performing the actual provisioning.
Features and Benefits
Table 1 describes ESA features and benefits.
Table 1.
Features and Benefits
Feature
Benefit
Service design
Allows IT architects to create uniform network designs with flexibility to provide standardized configurations.
Helps reduce complexity by providing best practices and Cisco validated topology designs for the userselected branch functions.
Plug and play
Provides automated zero-touch deployment and day-zero provisioning for the hardware platforms connecting
to the network.
Reduces operational cost due to reduced need of technicians onsite to connect and configure the physical
hardware and the hosting platforms.
IP addressing
Reduces time to provision by avoiding static IP address assignments. Supports new device onboarding by
providing IP address pool definitions per site.
Exposes APIs to integrate with IT tools to automate IP address assignments to the components being
onboarded.
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Feature
Benefit
Group attributes automation
Improves user experience and automation of multibranch provisioning by defining common attributes at the
group, region, and site levels.
Avoids the need to type in the predefined attributes for individual devices or components being provisioned
using the tool.
Virtual service chaining
Reduces complexity by supporting Cisco validated topology designs for virtual functions to make sure that
connectivity results in a working branch network.
Automates service chaining to prevent manual service chaining errors and reduce time required for
troubleshooting connectivity issues.
Physical branch provisioning
Provisions entire branch network by automating onboarding, initial configuration, and customer-supplied
configurations for the complete branch network.
Supports simultaneous provisioning of multiple branches with the standardized configurations through easy-touse bulk provisioning mechanisms.
Deployment and diagnostics
status
Improves visibility by providing insights into errors in provisioning at every logical step per component, thereby
reducing the time taken for troubleshooting provisioning errors.
Approval process
Embeds approval process in the workflow to provide trusted environment for IT organizations before pushing
any changes to the network. Follows Information Technology Infrastructure Library processes that align with IT
organizational needs.
Allows only authorized persons to approve the branch designs and provisioning process.
Versioning
Serves as a single source of truth for network operators to see what is provisioned on the network by
versioning the changes, associating to the user who edited the profile and the branches that are affected by the
network profile.
Allows changes to multiple devices in multiple branches at the same time and provides a mechanism to keep
track of the changes.
Role-based authorization and
control
Supports an RBAC model, providing the IT organization flexibility to define tasks for each role.
Aligns with IT operational needs by providing support for customizable roles in addition to predefined ones.
Automation, Integration, and Cisco Validated Designs
Enterprise Service Automation is a process tool that supports APIs that allows external systems to be able to plug
into the tool, passing parameters to successfully automate the provisioning of branches that align with the
organizational processes. Cisco ESA is a thin, lightweight orchestration layer that closely integrates with other
Cisco management tools and controllers such as Cisco Prime Infrastructure and APIC-EM and is offered as an
enterprise-packaged solution. It uses the services available by the controller and management tools to do plug and
play, for registration and provisioning of both physical and virtual branches. It helps transparently monitor and
manage the components provisioned for inventory, change, fault, and performance functions.
ESA includes knowledge packs that are prepackaged within the system to be used while provisioning a virtual
branch and provide users with validated topology designs. These Cisco best practice designs could be used for
designing the virtual branch components. This helps the user manage the complexity of service chaining. The tool
is designed to provide flexibility to the user to pick and choose either the Cisco virtual network functions or best-inclass functions that are offered by other network vendors that are certified to work in this environment. The tool
also has built-in Cisco validated initial configurations from which the user can choose for deployment, thereby
making sure that the network can be up and running within minutes.
Platform Support/Compatibility
Table 2 describes platform support and compatibility.
Table 2.
Platform Support and Compatibility
Platforms and Functions
Product Family
Hosting platforms
Cisco UCS® C-Series Rack Servers
Cisco UCS E Series Servers
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Platforms and Functions
Product Family
Cisco virtual functions
Cisco Integrated Services Virtual Router (ISRv)
Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv)
Cisco Virtual Wireless Controller (vWLC)
Cisco Virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS)
Hardware platforms
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Service Routers
Cisco Catalyst® 3650 Series Switches
System Requirements
Table 3 provides product specifications for the various virtual appliance deployment options supported by Cisco
ESA.
Table 3.
Product Specifications
Resource Description
Minimum Requirement
Virtual CPUs (vCPUs)
4 vCPUs
Memory (DRAM)
16 GB
Minimum hard disk drive size
50 GB
Ordering and Licensing Information
Cisco Enterprise Service Automation 1.0 version is licensed per node. Table 4 provides ordering information.
Table 4.
Ordering Information
Part Number
Product Description
L-MGMT3-ESA-3K
Automation and provisioning of a 3K switch
L-MGMT3-ESA-ISR4K
Automation and provisioning of the ISR 4000 Series
L-MGMT3-ESA-ISRv
Automation and provisioning of the virtual router
L-MGMT3-ESA-ASAv
Automation and provisioning of a virtual Cisco ASA firewall
L-MGMT3-ESA-vWLC
Automation and provisioning of a virtual Cisco virtual wireless LAN controller
L-MGMT3-ESA-vWaaS
Automation and provisioning of virtual Cisco virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS)
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