Let’s discuss the number of steps to be taken to deploy a fully functional SD-WAN overlay.

1. Network Planning – This is the first step and includes planning related to device System IP, and Site ID including vEdge device configurations, policies, and plan out supporting device configurations to put together a detailed migration plan. 

2. Deployment of SD-WAN Controllers- The vBond (Orchestration plane) along with the vManage (Management plane) and vSmart (Control plane) need to be deployed and root certificate should be installed from Trusted Root CA, and the controllers should be authenticated to each other. 

3. Controllers Tuning - The SD-WAN controller status should be verified and tuned for best-practice configurations. The controllers need to be upgraded, if required. 

4. Upload Serial and Chassis Number- The vEdge serial and chassis number should be uploaded to vManage and vBond, adding as a a new vEdge device. Once uploaded the certificate is sent to the vSmart controller.

5. Configure Templates – Different types of Feature templates need to be created first, then create a Device template using those Feature templates and attach to one/ more vEdge device. vManage builds the total configuration and pushes (Device template) to the vEdge device. Now, this vEdge will become vManaged, instead of CLI managed.

6. Configure Localized Policy - Configure Localized policy and attach to an existing Device template. 

7. Configure Centralized Policy - Centralized policy is configured on vManage, and this will be downloaded to the vSmart controller. 

8. Bring up vEdge Devices – Now the vEdge device will come up and establish control connections with the vBond, vManage, and vSmart. Either manual bootstrap configuration or an automatic provisioning process (Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP)/ Cisco Network Plug and Play (PnP)) may be deployed on the Cisco IOS XE SD-WAN routers.