Cisco DNA Center — One Dashboard, One API

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Learning Objectives

Name DNA Center's four core workflow areas
Read a basic DNA Center REST API call
Filter a simulated device-list API response

Design, Policy, Provision, Assurance

DNA Center is Cisco's centralized dashboard sitting on top of everything in this course: Design defines the network hierarchy, Policy defines access rules, Provision pushes config (the automation layer), and Assurance gives health dashboards and AI-driven issue detection. It's also a REST API you can script against.

Needs the `requests` library and a real DNA Center instance -- won't run in this sandbox. Try Cisco's free DevNet DNA Center Sandbox for the real thing.

import requests

url = "https://dnac.example.com/dna/intent/api/v1/network-device"
headers = {"X-Auth-Token": "your-token-here"}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, verify=False)
print(response.json())

📝 Exercise: Filter a Simulated DNA Center Response

DNA Center's API would hand you back JSON like the sample below. Write a function unhealthy_devices(response) that returns the names of every device with healthScore below 7.

code.py

simulated_response = {
    "response": [
        {"hostname": "core-sw1", "healthScore": 10},
        {"hostname": "edge-rtr2", "healthScore": 4},
        {"hostname": "access-sw3", "healthScore": 6},
    ]
}

def unhealthy_devices(response):
    return [
        device["hostname"]
        for device in response["response"]
        if device["healthScore"] < 7
    ]

print("Needs attention:", unhealthy_devices(simulated_response))

Output

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