CloudVision Automation and Visibility
What to know
CloudVision is Arista's management platform combining automation, telemetry, and change control. Candidates should understand its architecture: CloudVision Portal (CVP) as the management/UI layer, the Telemetry and provisioning components, and how switches stream state (via eAPI, gNMI, or streaming telemetry) to CloudVision. Know the concepts of change control (staged changes, approval workflows, snapshots/rollback), compliance auditing against configured intent, and the difference between configuration management and streaming telemetry.
Understand intent-based provisioning: define desired state, CloudVision renders per-device configs, and change control gates deployment. Know that streaming telemetry pushes data continuously versus SNMP polling. Recognize the role of CloudVision in zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) and how device tags/containers group devices for policy.
Traps
- Confusing streaming telemetry (push, continuous, high-resolution) with SNMP polling (pull, interval-based).
- Assuming CloudVision changes apply immediately; change control requires explicit approval/execution.
- Mixing up configuration compliance (does running config match intent?) with telemetry (what is the device doing now?).
- Forgetting that ZTP relies on DHCP plus a bootstrap file to point devices at CloudVision.
Worked example / rule of thumb
You need sub-minute visibility into interface errors across 200 switches. Polling every 60s with SNMP is coarse and scales poorly; instead enable streaming telemetry to CloudVision for continuous push. Rule of thumb: use change control for anything that alters config, and telemetry for observing state; never conflate the two.