Network Management, Monitoring, and Automation
Management planes
Aruba offers Aruba Central (cloud), Aruba Central On-Premises, AirWave (legacy on-prem), and local management via AOS-CX CLI/Web UI. Know which platforms manage which devices: Central manages AOS-CX, AOS-S, Aruba APs, and gateways; AirWave historically managed AOS-S and controllers. Candidates should understand onboarding methods (cloud activation, ZTP, manual) and licensing tiers.
Monitoring
Key telemetry concepts: SNMP, syslog, sFlow, NetFlow/IPFIX, and streaming telemetry on AOS-CX. Aruba Central provides dashboards, alerts, and AI insights. Understand the difference between polling (SNMP) and streaming (gNMI) models, and when each is appropriate.
Automation
Aruba supports REST APIs, Ansible modules, Python (pyaoscx), and Central's API. AOS-CX supports NAE (Network Analytics Engine) scripts for on-box automation and monitoring. Understand the role of NAE agents, scripts, and alerts.
Traps
- Confusing AirWave and Central capabilities and supported device families.
- Assuming NAE requires an external server - it runs on-box.
- Mixing up sFlow (sampled) with NetFlow/IPFIX (flow-based) and gNMI (streaming telemetry).
- Forgetting licensing requirements for Central features.
Worked example
A customer wants to detect a loop automatically and trigger an alert. Use an NAE agent on AOS-CX with a script that monitors interface counters and generates an alert when thresholds are crossed - no external tooling needed.