In order to feel the effortless experience, you need to start somewhere. This blog will help guide you through setting up an ExtremeCloud IQ (XIQ) account as well as onboard a VOSS or EXOS switch to an existing network policy. Once through this process, we will look at the Device 360 view as well as the Network 360 Monitor Topology view to illustrate the data that XIQ can supply to network admins.

The first step in your effortless journey is to navigate to https://extremecloudiq.com. Once here, click Register Here to sign up for a free account (if you already have an account, you can continue to the onboarding section). Onscreen instructions guide you through supplying information that will help us create your account. Really the only tough part of this process is deciding if XIQ should retain all of your management data or just 90 days (more is better, right?). Once the form is submitted, you will receive an email that allows you to configure the account password. Your account is created.

For your next choice, you can decide to use XIQ as a Connect user (free with the ability to upgrade to subscription at any time) or try out Pilot (paid/subscription tier). Because we are going to push configurations to VOSS and EXOS devices, as opposed to just monitoring them from the cloud, let’s choose 30-day trial of Pilot. If you have a license, you can enter it now and avoid the whole debate!

Alright, now that you have an active account, we can onboard some devices. For the sake of brevity, I will assume you went off and created a network policy because you got bored reading, then came back for the fun part – onboarding your Extreme devices. Let’s navigate to Manage > Devices and click + > Quick Add Devices at the top left of the device table. Select the appropriate Device Make, enter in your serial number, choose a location and network policy, and click ADD DEVICES.

That’s all it takes. Well that and the proper code version on your device (more information here). Now the devices will call out to XIQ, grab their configuration, and be off on their way. You can sit back, grab a cup of coffee and relax. Until you realize that there is a plethora of monitoring information coming into XIQ and that you have to read all of it right now!

Once devices are connected to XIQ (read above) they will be sending myriad information about themselves and connected clients/devices to XIQ. Here is where the fun begins. To access information about the device itself, we can click Manage > Devices > $HOSTNAME and this bring up the Device 360 (D360) view. Look at all that data!

Last stop for this blog is the Network 360 Monitor Topology Tab. Luckily the name implies how to navigate there: ML Insights > Network 360 Monitor > $FLOOR. Once here, you get a nice graphical view (derived from LLDP messages) of devices and clients on your network. Down at the bottom, we get a nice table of the clients connected to our network (wireless only for now). If you would like, click on one of the hostnames and even more information will be presented in a Client 360 view!

Enjoy!