Cisco SD-WAN vSmart CLI Template

In this lesson, I’ll explain how to convert the vSmart controller from CLI mode to vManage mode using a CLI template. If your vSmart controller is not in vManage mode and you try to activate a centralized policy like the ones I used for the hub and spoke topology or application-aware routing, you will get an error.

If you haven’t seen centralized policies before, you can skip this lesson if you want to. I’ll add a link from the centralized policy lesson to this lesson in case you need it. If you want to see what a CLI template looks like, please continue.

Go to Configuration > Policies > Centralized Policy and try to Activate any of your policies:

Cisco Sd Wan Centralized Policy Activate

You get the “vSmarts are not in vManage mode” error:

Cisco Sd Wan Vsmarts Not In Vmanage Mode

This happens because the vSmart controller is in CLI mode. It has to be in vManage mode. Let’s fix this.

Configuration

Go to Configuration > Devices > Controllers, and you can see the current Mode:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Cli Mode

We have two options:

  • Create device and feature templates as we did in this lesson.
  • Use a CLI template.

The best option is to create a device template with the required feature templates because this is a scalable solution. However, in a lab, with only a single vSmart controller, the quickest way is to use the CLI mode. I haven’t shown the CLI mode yet in any of our lessons, so this will be a good exercise.

Click on Configuration > Templates > Create Template > CLI Template. Select vSmart as the Device Model, give the template a name, and paste in the configuration of your vSmart controller:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Cli Mode Config

Click on Add to continue.

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Attach

In the Template screen, select the device template, click on the three dots, and select Attach Devices:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Attach

Select the vSmart controller and click on Attach:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Attach Select

The output of the Config Preview should look familiar:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Config Preview

Next, click on Configure Devices and wait until the template is pushed to the vSmart controller.

Verification

Go to Configuration > Devices > Controllers, and you’ll see that the vSmart controller is now in vManage mode:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Vmanaged Mode

Go back to Configuration > Policies > Centralized Policy and try to activate one of your policies again:

Cisco Sd Wan Controllers Vsmart Activate Policy No Error

This time, you don’t get an error, and you can click on the Activate button.

Conclusion

You have now learned how to create a CLI template to move your vSmart controller from CLI mode to vManage mode. This solves the “vSmarts are not in vManage mode” error.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson. If you have any questions, please leave a comment.


Forum Replies

  1. When trying to do this in a lab I am getting the error:

    Device failed to process request. Error type : application Error tag : access-denied

    I have googled the error but the fix about removing the ciscotacro and ciscotacrw couldn’t be done as well

    vSmart(config-aaa)# no user ciscotacro group operator
    Error: access denied
    

  2. Hello Jeromy

    After doing some research, I have found that this seems to be a bug that appears occasionally. Some bug reports do indeed suggest the fix you mentioned, while others state that it has to do with a manually configured ip routing command on the vEdge. These involve releases 17.3.1 20.3 20.3.1 20.4 20.4.1, and cEdge-16.10.1 respectively. Rene used version 19.3.0 in his lessons.

    The only thing I can suggest is to see if you can obtain the same version as Rene to duplicate his implementation. Otherwise, you can troubleshoot using Cisco TAC (if this

    ... Continue reading in our forum

  3. I concur I had this same problem with version 20.3.2. Just went to the copied config and deleted the ciscotacro and ciscotacrw accounts from it.

  4. It worked here too, by removing the lines below from the created template:

    user ciscotacro
    description CiscoTACReadOnly
    group operator
    status enabled
    !
    user ciscotacrw
    description CiscoTACReadWrite
    group netadmin
    status enabled
    !

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