Understanding Deploy Mode in Network Director

The Deploy mode enables you to deploy configuration changes and software upgrades to devices and perform several device management and configuration file management tasks.

Note: Deploy mode is disabled for devices in your Virtual view. This is because you can only discover, manage, and monitor devices in your virtual network. None of the deploy mode tasks are applicable to these devices.

Deploying Configuration Changes

When you make configuration changes in Build mode, the changes are not deployed to devices automatically. You must manually deploy the changes to devices in Deploy mode. Every time you make configuration changes in Build mode that affect a device, the device is automatically added to the list of devices with pending changes. Configuration changes are deployed to devices at the device level. When you deploy configuration changes to a device, all pending configuration changes for that device are deployed.

• Run configuration deployment jobs immediately or schedule them for future times.
• Preview pending configuration changes before deploying.
• Validate that the pending changes are compatible with the device’s configuration.
• Manage configuration deployment jobs.

Configuration changes are validated for each device both in Network Director and on the device. If any part of a configuration change for a device fails validation, no configuration changes are deployed to the device. You can see the results of each validation phase separately.

Network Director will not deploy configuration to a device with a configuration that is out of sync (meaning that the device’s configuration differs from Network Director’s version of that device’s configuration), or to a device that has uncommitted changes to its candidate configuration. Deployment to such devices will fail.

When you schedule a deployment job, that job and any profiles and devices assigned to that job are locked within Network Director. You cannot edit the job or any of its assigned profiles until the job runs or gets cancelled. This locking feature prevents you from deploying unintended configuration changes that could result from editing profiles and devices that are already scheduled to deploy. To change any properties of a scheduled job, cancel the job and create a new scheduled job with the desired properties. You cannot edit the profile assignments of a device that has scheduled pending configuration changes.

Managing Software Images

Network Director can manage software images on the nodes it manages. You can do the following software image management tasks:

• Deploy a software image stored in an image repository on the Network Director server to multiple devices with a single job.
• Track the status of software image management jobs.
• Stage and install software images as separate tasks.
• Schedule staging and installation to happen at independent future times.
• Perform several software image upgrade options, such as rebooting devices automatically after the upgrade finishes.

Note: Using nonstop software upgrade (NSSU) to upgrade EX Series switches is supported in Network Director release 1.5.

Zero Touch Provisioning

Zero touch provisioning enables you to provision new Juniper Networks switches in your network automatically—without manual intervention. When you physically connect a switch to a network and boot it with the factory-default configuration, the switch attempts to upgrade the Junos OS software automatically and autoinstall a configuration file from the network.

Managing Devices

In Deploy mode you can perform several device management tasks, including:

• View the device inventory.
• Show a device’s current configuration.
• Resynchronize the device configuration maintained in Build mode with the configuration on the device. For more information about resynchronization of device configuration, see Understanding Resynchronization of Device Configuration
• Convert access points that were added to a controller using an Auto AP profile configuration to a persistent access point configuration on the controller.
• Enable or disable switch network ports.
• Manage QFabric node groups.
• Convert QSFP+ port configuation.

Managing Device Configuration Files

You can back up device configuration files to the Network Director server. You can perform several actions on backed up configuration files, such as restoring configuration files to devices, and viewing and comparing configuration files.