DevNet is Cisco's Developer Program. DevNet is a free resources available to anyone at http://developer.cisco.com. It provides resources for Application Developers and Infrastructure Developers. DevNet is useful for Application Developers looking to leverage technologies like Spark and Tropo in their software, or build new Internet of Things applications with analytics and the IOx platform. Similarly, Infrastructure Developers looking to treat "Infrastructure as Code" will find everything they need to begin deploying and managing Cisco infrastructure components through APIs and other programmatic interfaces. Those looking to learn and gain new skills will find Learning Labs, code samples, and development Sandboxes freely available at anytime. In this module we will take a tour through the DevNet, and explore how it will help you "Learn, Code, Inspire and Connect" using Cisco's development platforms.
Though DevNet provides a number of assets, the most important is to provide context around why an application developer would write software that integrates with certain Cisco products and how to actually achieve that those goals. The best and most adopted APIs can track their success to documentation that is easy to find, understand and use. As a result, DevNet has an equally important role to evangelize and guide internal teams to create excellent developer resources.
The DevNet portal is currently broken up into DevCenters that contain several microsites pertaining to individual technologies. In addition, there are some "spoke" sites off of the DevNet "hub". Cisco Spark (https://developer.ciscospark.com) is an example of this.
- Cisco's developer relations program
- Not just a portal (developer.cisco.com)
- Sandboxes, Learning Labs, Developer Support, events
- APIC-EM
- CMX
- Cisco Spark
- Find APIC-EM docs through DevNet
- Find the API call to identify the hosts managed by the controller
- Run the API call in documentation to create a ticket (aka access token) (username: devnetuser, password: Cisco123) item: # (/slide)
- Find CMX docs through DevNet
- Find API call to identify the number of clients being tracked by the mobility services engine
- Run the API call in the documentation (username: learning, password: learning) item: # (/slide)
- Find Spark docs through DevNet
- Find API call to identify list of rooms you are a member of
- Run the API call in the documentation to list the rooms item: # (/slide)
Developers love learning new things, and DevNet offers educational content. Starting at Cisco Live! US 2014, DevNet introduced Learning Labs. Learning Labs are self paced tutorials that last 15-40 minutes. They are designed to introduce developers to new technologies in a step-by-step manner. The Labs are organized into Modules and Tracks to allow users to focus on the labs that pertain specifically to their goals (e.g., Network Programmability, Cloud Collaboration applications, Infrastructure Programmability and so on). Because Modules and Tracks contain many learning labs, completion of a Module or Track can be many hours of content and exercises.
- An online resource for technical tutorials
- Relatively short 15-40 minute labs
- Labs can be combined to form educational Tracks. item: # (/slide)
- Review Tracks
- Complete 2 Labs
- Visit the tracks page
- Visit the labs page
- Observe the differences between these views into the available labs. item: # (/slide)
- Popular labs include the Coding 101 Lab and Sending Spark Messages Lab item: # (/slide)
DevNet provides the ability for any internal engineer or doc writer to build out a learning lab on a topic that they feel the larger developer community may find useful. Documentation on how to do this is covered here
Documentation, tutorials and sample code are great, but a developer also needs to run code against an environment. That's where the DevNet Sandbox comes in. The DevNet Sandbox provides a few dozen combinations of technologies and infrastructure topologies that can be reserved or that are shared and are "always on". This allows application developers to have an environment to test out their applications or solutions without having to spend a lot of time and/or money to get their lab up and running. Many of the Learning Labs utilize the DevNet Sandbox for a hands-on learning experience.
- Reservation-based or shared environments for trying out your code
- Linked up with DevNet Learning Labs in most cases
- Reservation
- APIC-EM Always On
- CMX Always On
- Find the instructions for the APIC-EM always on lab
- Find APIC-EM docs
- In Postman figure out how to create an API ticket on the APIC-EM always on Sandbox using credentials
{
"username":"devnetuser",
"password":"Cisco123!"
}
- Use that ticket to get a list of hosts managed on that controller
- Find the instructions for the CMX always on lab
- Find the CMX docs
- In Postman, figure out how to get a list of the notification subscriptions already on the server
- Reverse engineer the result to create a NEW notification subscription on the server item: # (/slide)
Downstream, as developers are working with the technologies in the sandboxes or in their own labs, they may come across some issues that they can't figure out, either because the documentation is bad gasp, or their problem is new, or there is a bug in the platform double gasp. This is where support comes into play.
The first line of defense are the DevNet Communities. This area is split up in relation to all of the technologies DevNet supports so for each microsite there is a community for discussion forums and blog content. Though there is no SLA and response is best effort, DevNet staff monitor these forums daily and respond when the community does not or cannot.
The second line of defense is a support ticket. This is a benefit of the solution partner program or can be purchased on an ad-hoc basis. Tickets are assigned to engineers directly who provide 1 on 1 developer support and potentially work hand in hand with TAC should it be a product issue. These engineers are the third party developers' main advocate.
- Developer support can help clarify documentation or work around bugs in the platform.
- DevNet Communities is the community-based support platform
- Developers and Partners can also purchase support tickets. item: # (/slide)
DevNet supports CiscoLive events globally, to independently organized hackathons and conferences. If there are developers, DevNet wants to be there. Through our team of Dev Evangelists, DevNet is represented all over the world explaining the benefits of working with Cisco and related technologies. Upcoming events can be found at https://communities.cisco.com/community/developer
- DevNet is Cisco's Developer program
- Main resources are available at developer.cisco.com
- Learning Labs and Sandbox help developers experience and learn
- Developer support options
- DevNet represents at many hackathons and events around the world
- Upcoming events can be found at https://communities.cisco.com/community/developer