The two primary technologies that are being used with
Cisco NSO are the following:
NETCONF: Used for standard and efficient automation of
configuration
YANG: Used for services and device configuration data modelingOne of the main advantages of Cisco NSO is the model-
to-model mapping capability. A network administrator
can define the data models for the end-to-end services
that need to be implemented in the network (for
example, Layer 3 MPLS VPNs, IPTV), and NSO maps
those service models into device models for various
vendor devices. Because a large number of devices do not
fully support NETCONF and YANG data models, NSO
uses Network Element Drivers (NEDs) to model native
device CLIs into YANG models. NSO offers a level of
abstraction that makes network devices transparent to
the service management of the network. This way,
complex services can be described and implemented in
simple ways and pushed to the devices no matter the
device vendor, configuration semantics, and so on.
NSO provides several northbound interfaces for service
and platform management, including NETCONF,
RESTCONF, JSON/RPC, a CLI, a web user interface, and
SNMP. The NSO CLI and web user interface are usually
used for human interaction with the platform, SNMP
and NETCONF are used for monitoring, and the
NETCONF, RESTCONF, and JSON/RPC interfaces are
used for automation integration. The NSO CLI has two
modes of operation: operational mode, used primarily to
monitor and maintain the platform, and configuration
mode, used to configure the services, the devices, and the
NSO server. Two CLI styles are offered to NSO operators:
Cisco style, which is identical to the Cisco CLI, and
Juniper style, which is identical to the Juniper CLI. CLI
users can easily switch between them by using the
switch cli command.