Cisco Catalyst Center Commands

Overview

Cisco’s network management platform branding has evolved:

Era	Product	Status
2017-2023	DNA Center (DNAC)	Rebranded to Catalyst Center
2023+	Catalyst Center	Current platform (same API)
Legacy	Prime Infrastructure	Still in production at many enterprises

Era

Product

Status

2017-2023

DNA Center (DNAC)

Rebranded to Catalyst Center

2023+

Catalyst Center

Current platform (same API)

Legacy

Prime Infrastructure

Still in production at many enterprises

The netapi dnac and netapi prime command groups provide CLI access to these platforms. The DNAC commands work with both DNA Center and Catalyst Center since the API remains compatible.

Prerequisites

Load secrets before using these commands:

dsource d000 dev/network

DNA Center / Catalyst Center

Variable Description

Variable	Description
`DNAC_HOST`	Catalyst Center IP or hostname
`DNAC_USER`	API username
`DNAC_PASS`	API password

DNAC_HOST

Catalyst Center IP or hostname

DNAC_USER

API username

DNAC_PASS

API password

Prime Infrastructure

Variable Description

Variable	Description
`PRIME_HOST`	Prime Infrastructure IP or hostname
`PRIME_USER`	API username
`PRIME_PASS`	API password

PRIME_HOST

Prime Infrastructure IP or hostname

PRIME_USER

API username

PRIME_PASS

API password

DNA Center / Catalyst Center

Commands Reference

Command Description

Command	Description
Device Management
`get-devices`	List all network devices
`get-device`	Get device details by UUID
`get-device-by-ip`	Get device by IP address
`get-device-count`	Get total device count
`get-device-health`	Get device health summary
Site Management
`get-sites`	List all sites
`get-site-health`	Get site health scores
Client Management
`get-client-health`	Get client health summary
`get-client`	Get client details by MAC
Issues & Assurance
`get-issues`	List network issues
Templates
`get-templates`	List configuration templates
Command Runner
`run-commands`	Execute CLI commands on devices
System
`health`	Check connectivity

Device Management

get-devices

List all network devices

get-device

Get device details by UUID

get-device-by-ip

Get device by IP address

get-device-count

Get total device count

get-device-health

Get device health summary

Site Management

get-sites

List all sites

get-site-health

Get site health scores

Client Management

get-client-health

Get client health summary

get-client

Get client details by MAC

Issues & Assurance

get-issues

List network issues

Templates

get-templates

List configuration templates

Command Runner

run-commands

Execute CLI commands on devices

System

health

Check connectivity

Device Commands

get-devices

List all managed network devices:

netapi dnac get-devices

Example Output

           DNA Center Devices (45)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Hostname           ┃ IP             ┃ Platform        ┃ Role          ┃ Status    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ CORE-SW-01         │ 10.1.1.1       │ C9300-48U       │ ACCESS        │ Reachable │
│ CORE-SW-02         │ 10.1.1.2       │ C9300-48U       │ ACCESS        │ Reachable │
│ WLC-01             │ 10.1.1.10      │ C9800-L         │ WIRELESS      │ Reachable │
│ DIST-SW-01         │ 10.1.1.100     │ C9500-24Y4C     │ DISTRIBUTION  │ Reachable │
│ EDGE-RTR-01        │ 10.1.1.254     │ ISR4451-X/K9    │ BORDER ROUTER │ Reachable │
└────────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────┘

Limit results:

netapi dnac get-devices --limit 10

get-device

Get detailed device information:

netapi dnac get-device a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890

Example Output

Hostname: CORE-SW-01
IP: 10.1.1.1
Platform: C9300-48U
Software: 17.6.4
Serial: FCW2136L0PK
Role: ACCESS
Location: Building-A/Floor-1
Uptime: 45 days, 12:34:56

get-device-by-ip

Look up device by management IP:

netapi dnac get-device-by-ip 10.1.1.1

get-device-health

View device health summary:

netapi dnac get-device-health

Example Output

Category: All
  Healthy: 42
  Fair: 2
  Poor: 1
  Total: 45

Site Commands

get-sites

List all sites in the hierarchy:

netapi dnac get-sites

Example Output

           DNA Center Sites (8)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                 ┃ Type      ┃ ID                          ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Global               │ area      │ a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-...      │
│ US-West              │ area      │ b2c3d4e5-f6a7-8901-...      │
│ Los Angeles          │ building  │ c3d4e5f6-a7b8-9012-...      │
│ LA-Floor-1           │ floor     │ d4e5f6a7-b8c9-0123-...      │
│ LA-Floor-2           │ floor     │ e5f6a7b8-c9d0-1234-...      │
└──────────────────────┴───────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

get-site-health

View health scores per site:

netapi dnac get-site-health

Example Output

                Site Health
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Site             ┃ Overall ┃ Network ┃ Clients ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Los Angeles      │ 95      │ 98      │ 92      │
│ San Francisco    │ 88      │ 90      │ 85      │
│ Seattle          │ 72      │ 75      │ 68      │
└──────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘

Client Commands

get-client-health

View overall client health:

netapi dnac get-client-health

get-client

Get client details by MAC address:

netapi dnac get-client 00:11:22:33:44:55

Example Output

MAC: 00:11:22:33:44:55
IP: 10.50.10.101
Username: jsmith
Device: Windows Laptop
Connection: WIRELESS_802_11_N
SSID: Corporate
Location: Building-A/Floor-1
Health: 85

Issues & Assurance

get-issues

List network issues:

netapi dnac get-issues

Example Output

               Network Issues (12)
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Priority ┃ Name                             ┃ Category   ┃ Status   ┃ Device     ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ P1       │ High CPU Utilization              │ Device     │ active   │ CORE-SW-01 │
│ P2       │ AP Radio Channel Changed          │ Wireless   │ active   │ AP-FLOOR-1 │
│ P3       │ Client Authentication Failure     │ Client     │ active   │ WLC-01     │
└──────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴────────────┴──────────┴────────────┘

Filter by priority or status:

# Only P1 issues
netapi dnac get-issues --priority P1

# Only active issues
netapi dnac get-issues --status active

# Both filters
netapi dnac get-issues --priority P1 --status active

Templates

get-templates

List available configuration templates:

netapi dnac get-templates

Example Output

             Templates (15)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name                     ┃ Project           ┃ Version ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━┩
│ VLAN-Provisioning        │ LAN-Automation    │ 2       │
│ Port-Security            │ Security-Baseline │ 3       │
│ SNMP-Config              │ Day-N             │ 1       │
│ AAA-Template             │ Security-Baseline │ 4       │
└──────────────────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────┘

Command Runner

run-commands

Execute CLI commands on devices:

# Single command on single device
netapi dnac run-commands "a1b2c3d4-uuid" "show version"

# Multiple commands on multiple devices
netapi dnac run-commands "uuid1,uuid2,uuid3" "show interfaces,show ip route"

Example Output

Running commands on 3 device(s)...
Task submitted: task-abc123-456-789
Check task status in DNA Center UI

Command output is retrieved via the DNA Center UI or API task endpoint. The CLI submits the task and returns the task ID.

System

health

Check Catalyst Center connectivity:

netapi dnac health

Example Output

✓ DNA Center is reachable

Prime Infrastructure

Commands Reference

Command Description

Command	Description
Device Management
`get-devices`	List managed devices
`get-device`	Get device details
`get-device-count`	Get total device count
Alarms
`get-alarms`	List alarms
`ack-alarm`	Acknowledge an alarm
Compliance
`get-violations`	List compliance violations
Configuration
`get-configs`	List configuration archives
Jobs
`get-jobs`	List recent jobs
System
`health`	Check connectivity

Device Management

get-devices

List managed devices

get-device

Get device details

get-device-count

Get total device count

Alarms

get-alarms

List alarms

ack-alarm

Acknowledge an alarm

Compliance

get-violations

List compliance violations

Configuration

get-configs

List configuration archives

Jobs

get-jobs

List recent jobs

System

health

Check connectivity

Device Commands

get-devices

List managed devices:

netapi prime get-devices

Example Output

            Prime Devices (120)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name               ┃ IP             ┃ Type                ┃ Status    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ core-sw-01         │ 10.1.1.1       │ Cisco Catalyst 9300 │ REACHABLE │
│ access-sw-01       │ 10.1.2.1       │ Cisco Catalyst 9200 │ REACHABLE │
│ wlc-01             │ 10.1.3.1       │ Cisco 9800          │ REACHABLE │
│ router-01          │ 10.1.4.1       │ Cisco ISR 4451      │ REACHABLE │
└────────────────────┴────────────────┴─────────────────────┴───────────┘

Filter and limit:

# Limit to 20 results
netapi prime get-devices --limit 20

# Filter by device type (Prime filter syntax)
netapi prime get-devices --filter "deviceType=Cisco Catalyst 9300"

Alarm Commands

get-alarms

List alarms:

netapi prime get-alarms

Example Output

              Prime Alarms (25)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Severity  ┃ Device           ┃ Message                                   ┃ Time               ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ CRITICAL  │ core-sw-01       │ Power Supply Failure                      │ 2026-02-21T09:30   │
│ MAJOR     │ access-sw-15     │ High CPU Utilization                      │ 2026-02-21T09:25   │
│ MINOR     │ router-02        │ BGP Neighbor Down                         │ 2026-02-21T09:20   │
│ WARNING   │ wlc-01           │ AP Radio Channel Changed                  │ 2026-02-21T09:15   │
└───────────┴──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────┘

Filter by severity:

# Only critical alarms
netapi prime get-alarms --severity CRITICAL

# Only unacknowledged
netapi prime get-alarms --unacknowledged

ack-alarm

Acknowledge an alarm:

netapi prime ack-alarm 12345

Example Output

Acknowledged: 12345

Compliance Commands

get-violations

List compliance violations:

netapi prime get-violations

Example Output

            Compliance Violations (8)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Device           ┃ Policy             ┃ Rule                   ┃ Severity  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ access-sw-01     │ CIS-Benchmark      │ Enable-SSH-Only        │ HIGH      │
│ access-sw-03     │ CIS-Benchmark      │ NTP-Auth-Required      │ MEDIUM    │
│ router-01        │ Corporate-Standard │ Banner-Required        │ LOW       │
└──────────────────┴────────────────────┴────────────────────────┴───────────┘

Filter by device:

netapi prime get-violations --device-id 12345

Configuration Commands

get-configs

List configuration archives:

netapi prime get-configs

Example Output

           Config Archives (50)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Device           ┃ Type           ┃ Time               ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ core-sw-01       │ running-config │ 2026-02-21T06:00   │
│ core-sw-01       │ startup-config │ 2026-02-20T06:00   │
│ access-sw-01     │ running-config │ 2026-02-21T06:00   │
└──────────────────┴────────────────┴────────────────────┘

Job Commands

get-jobs

List recent Prime jobs:

netapi prime get-jobs

Example Output

              Prime Jobs (10)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID           ┃ Name                          ┃ Status     ┃ Started            ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 12345        │ Config Backup                 │ COMPLETED  │ 2026-02-21T06:00   │
│ 12346        │ Compliance Scan               │ RUNNING    │ 2026-02-21T09:00   │
│ 12347        │ Discovery                     │ COMPLETED  │ 2026-02-20T22:00   │
└──────────────┴───────────────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────────────┘

System

health

Check Prime Infrastructure connectivity:

netapi prime health

Example Output

✓ Prime Infrastructure is reachable
Version: 3.10.2

Workflows

Daily Health Check

#!/bin/bash
# Morning network health check

dsource d000 dev/network

echo "=== Catalyst Center Health ==="
netapi dnac health
netapi dnac get-device-health
netapi dnac get-issues --priority P1

echo -e "\n=== Prime Alarms ==="
netapi prime get-alarms --severity CRITICAL --unacknowledged

Device Inventory Export

#!/bin/bash
# Export device inventory from both platforms

dsource d000 dev/network

DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d)
mkdir -p /reports/inventory/$DATE

# Catalyst Center devices
netapi dnac get-devices --limit 500 > /reports/inventory/$DATE/dnac-devices.txt

# Prime devices
netapi prime get-devices --limit 500 > /reports/inventory/$DATE/prime-devices.txt

echo "Inventory exported to /reports/inventory/$DATE"

Issue Triage

#!/bin/bash
# Quick issue triage workflow

dsource d000 dev/network

# Check P1 issues first
echo "=== Critical Issues (P1) ==="
netapi dnac get-issues --priority P1 --status active

# Check device with issues
read -p "Enter device IP to investigate: " IP
netapi dnac get-device-by-ip "$IP"

Troubleshooting

Authentication Failed

# Verify environment variables
echo "DNAC_HOST: $DNAC_HOST"
echo "DNAC_USER: $DNAC_USER"

# Test API endpoint directly
curl -k -X POST "https://$DNAC_HOST/dna/system/api/v1/auth/token" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u "$DNAC_USER:$DNAC_PASS"

SSL Certificate Errors

Both platforms typically use self-signed certificates. The clients disable SSL verification by default. If you need to use a CA-signed certificate:

# Override in Python code
from netapi.vendors.cisco.dnac import DnacClient

client = DnacClient(
    host="catalyst.example.com",
    username="admin",
    password="secret",
    verify_ssl=True
)

API Version Compatibility

DNA Center / Catalyst Center API evolves across versions. The client uses common endpoints that work across 2.x versions. If you encounter compatibility issues:

Check your Catalyst Center version: Help > About
Verify API documentation matches your version
Report issues if core functionality doesn’t work

Migration: Prime to Catalyst Center

If migrating from Prime Infrastructure to Catalyst Center:

Device Import: Use Catalyst Center’s discovery or import devices from Prime export
Configuration Templates: Recreate templates in Catalyst Center’s Design workflow
Compliance: Define new compliance policies in Catalyst Center
Alarms/Issues: Catalyst Center uses Assurance for similar functionality

The netapi commands provide a consistent CLI experience across both platforms, simplifying operational workflows during migration.