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• Prestaging Devices Overview    

• Related Topics
• Viewing Prestaging Rules
• Discovering and Assigning All N-PE Devices
• Discovering and Assigning N-PE Devices with Exceptions

Prestaging Devices Overview

In the Junos Space product, prestaging takes the devices already under Junos Space management and prepares them for service activation. The prestaging process discovers network provider edge (N-PE) devices in the Junos Space database and assigns roles to those devices and their interfaces. N-PE routers and user-to-network interfaces (UNIs) are basic building blocks required by provisioning.

Note: The Ethernet Activator application does not support provisioning for J Series devices.

The Junos Space software makes it easy to complete all the prestaging activities you need for up to several hundred devices.

Prestaging using the Ethernet Activator software automatically determines the role of a router based on rules that exist in the system. If a router is an N-PE router, the Junos Space software assigns it the N-PE role. The Junos Space software qualifies each interface on the N-PE router to be a serviceable UNI.

N-PE and UNI recommendations made automatically by the Ethernet Activator software are appropriate for most situations. In some networks, however, you might need to make some exceptions. You might have recommended N-PE devices that you don’t want to assign the N-PE role for provisioning. In addition, you might want to exclude some interfaces from qualification as UNIs.

To prestage devices while accepting all recommendations made by the Ethernet Activator software, see Discovering and Assigning All N-PE Devices. To make exceptions to the Ethernet Activator recommendations, see Discovering and Assigning N-PE Devices with Exceptions.

The following topics provide additional overview information about the prestaging process:

• Prestaging Prerequisites
• Prestaging Process Overview
• Prestaging Rules
• VLAN Pool Profiles

Prestaging Prerequisites

Before you can perform prestaging on your network devices, each device must meet specific configuration requirements, and must be brought under Junos Space management through device discovery.

The following configuration requirements must be met before beginning the provisioning process. Otherwise, service deployment will fail:

• MPLS must run on each N-PE device and on each P device.
• LDP signaling must be established between N-PE devices that will participate in the same point-to-point Ethernet (LDP) service.
• MPBGP must run on each N-PE device that will participate in a multipoint service.

Before you can prestage devices, you must perform device discovery to import all Juniper Networks devices on your network that the Junos Space software can manage. The Ethernet Activator prestaging software works on devices that have already been discovered and imported into the Junos Space database, but have not yet been prestaged.

For details about bringing devices under Junos Space management, see Discovering Devices in the Junos Space Network Application Platform User Guide.

Prestaging Process Overview

After the Junos Space software has discovered the devices, you must perform a two or three stage process to prestage devices:

1. Discover roles. In this stage, the Junos Space software searches the database for N-PE devices that have not yet been assigned.
2. Examine the results of the role discovery and make any exceptions to the system recommendations (rare). Specifically, you might:
   • Exclude specified devices from N-PE role assignment.

     You might need to do this for a device that you know is not a PE device. For example, Provider (P) devices that have loopback addresses will pass the rules for N-PE role assignment. For devices that you know are not PE devices, you can edit the configuration out-of-band, and then run role discovery again.

   • Select a different loopback address for a device.
   • Exclude interfaces from UNI assignment.
3. Confirm the assignments.

When you confirm device assignments, those devices are removed from the list of recommendations. If, initially, you exclude devices from assignment, you can return to the list of recommendations later and make further assignments.

When you add more devices to your network, you will need to discover those devices and run the role discovery operation again. Running role discovery again overwrites any devices remaining in the role discovery results list of recommended assigments, but has no effect on devices with confirmed assignments.

You make assignments and exceptions using two inventory pages:

• The Assign Roles screen is a device inventory of N-PE routers that the Ethernet Activator software has discovered in its database that have not yet been assigned.
• The Manage Device UNIs screen is an inventory of UNI-qualified interfaces for a specific discovered device. You can view a separate Manage Device UNIs screen for each discovered N-PE device.

You can select and work on individual objects or multiple objects at the same time. The following topics summarize the operations you can perform from these inventory screens:

• Assign Roles Screen with Multiple Selections
• Assign Roles Screen with One Device Selected
• Manage Device UNIs Screen with Multiple Selections
• Manage Device UNIs Screen with Single UNI Selected

Assign Roles Screen with Multiple Selections

The following example shows the Assign Roles screen with multiple devices selected:

This example shows all the devices the Ethernet Activator software has discovered and recommended for assignment as N-PE devices. The most common and recommended prestaging workflow is to select all devices in the Assign Roles screen and assign them all. See Discovering and Assigning All N-PE Devices for step-by-step instructions for assigning all Junos Space recommendations.

You can also use this screen to exclude specified devices from the N-PE role. See Discovering and Assigning N-PE Devices with Exceptions for step-by-step instructions.

Assign Roles Screen with One Device Selected

This example shows the Assign Roles screen with just one device selected:

You must select a single device to change the loopback address or the UNI assignments on that device. You can also exclude a single device using this screen.

For step-by-step instructions on selecting a different loopback address, see Changing the Loopback Address of an N-PE Device.

Manage Device UNIs Screen with Multiple Selections

This example shows the Manage Device UNIs screen with multiple UNIs selected:

You can use this screen to exclude multiple interfaces from qualification as UNIs.

For step-by-step instructions on excluding interfaces from the list of qualified UNIs, see Excluding Interfaces from UNI Role Assignments.

Manage Device UNIs Screen with Single UNI Selected

This example shows the Manage Device UNIs screen with just one UNI selected:

You can use this screen to exclude a single interface from the list qualified for UNI assignment.

Prestaging Rules

Prestaging rules are predefined. These rules contain criteria for classifying the MPLS role of each device, in addition to recommending which physical interfaces should be UNI interfaces. For each recommended UNI interface, the system recommends its primary loopback address and its VLAN pool profile.

Correctly assigning MPLS roles to devices is critical for provisioning the correct MPLS behavior. Each MPLS role has a different behavior. For example, N-PE is the only role allowed to terminate MPLS sessions.

The rules used by the Junos Space software to determine the recommended role assignment are described for devices, UNIs, and VLAN pool profiles in the following sections:

• N-PE Device Classification Rules
• UNI Classification Rules
• VLAN Pool Profile Classification Rules

N-PE Device Classification Rules

The system recommends the N-PE role for devices that satisfy the following criteria:

• The comment field in the device configuration identifies the device as an N-PE device.
• The device role is set to N-PE unless EBGP is enabled for the device. Specifically, the device role is set to N-PE unless the device configuration has configuration/protocols/bgp/group/type set to external. IF EBGP is enabled, the device role is set to P.
• The device is assigned a loopback address. A device that has no loopback address cannot function as an N-PE device.

UNI Classification Rules

Before an interface on an N-PE device can be provisioned as a UNI, it must satisfy the following criteria:

• The interface must be Gigabit Ethernet (ge) or 10 Gigabit Ethernet (xe) type.
• The interface must have no IP address defined.

VLAN Pool Profile Classification Rules

The Junos Space software assigns VLAN pool ranges to the UNIs, depending on the configured encapsulation.

VLAN Pool Profiles

A VLAN pool profile specifies the ranges of valid VLAN IDs that are available for use on MX Series devices, on each physical interface. The maximum theoretical pool of VLAN IDs contains 4096 VLAN IDs—IDs 0 through 4095.

VLAN ID 0 and VLAN ID 4095 are never valid VLAN IDs.

The Ethernet Activator system provides the following predefined VLAN pool profiles:

• maximum-range—Any VLAN ID pool created using the maximum-range profile allows any VLAN ID from 1 through 4094. This is the default VLAN profile.
• vlan-ccc—Any VLAN ID pool created using the vlan-ccc profile allows any VLAN IDs from 512 through 4094 available for use. VLAN IDs 1 through 511 are reserved for use by Juniper Networks.

For each physical interface that the Ethernet Activator software recommends as a UNI, the system attempts to determine the best VLAN pool profile. For example, if a UNI has the vlan-ccc encapsulation setting, the rules recommend the vlan-ccc pool profile for that interface. When the correct VLAN pool profiles have been assigned to each UNI, The Ethernet Activator software creates a VLAN ID pool for each UNI containing only the allowed VLAN IDs specified in the VLAN pool profile for that UNI.

If the device interface is already running encapsulation before being brought under Junos Space management, the Ethernet Activator software will assign the appropriate VLAN range.

For details about encapsulation, see the Junos Software VPNs Configuration Guide.