Wi-Fi DevOps with Mist

DevOps is slowly becoming the new norm in the networking industry. It is also true if we look at the Wi-Fi industry. DevOps allows companies to automate a lot of time sensitive and tedious tasks. It also helps us to be proactive and identify issues before they can have negative impact on the Wi-Fi network.

A company such as Mist provides extensive API capabilities that allows Engineers to use programs in order to interact with their cloud platform. At SemFio Networks, we are loving it!

At SemFio Networks, we have been developing tools and resources to take advantage of the Mist API in order to automate the following tasks:

Zero day provisioning of access points
Deployment of new access points
Configurations of access point for site surveys

We are looking at adding more tools to the list in order to help our customers save time (and money) when they deploy their new Mist network.

This page presents a few good resources that can help you develop your own tools in order to take advantage of the Mist API platform.

Table of Content

SemFio Networks' Resources

This section presents the tools and resources created by SemFio Networks in order to automate tasks using Mist's API. Feel free to use these resources or contact us if you would us to help you develop your own tools.

Setup Your First Mist API Call

This video walk you through the process of setting up your environment in order to perform your first API Call to the Mist cloud platform.
The API call is performed using the Postman application.

Mist API Call using Python

This video walk you through the process of making an API call within a Python script. This is the beginning of being able to write a more complex and thorough program to automate operational tasks.

Learn Mist API with Mini Python Scripts

This series of videos explains how to make Mist API calls within very simple Python scripts. You should be able to apply them to your environment and discover the power of APIs. It will give you ideas to see how you could use DevOps to automate some tasks and save time!

Automate the preparation of an APoS Survey

This video showcase how we were able to leverage Mist API in order to configure an AP to perform an APoS site survey. This automates the preparation work before going on site to perform the survey.

pyMist by SemFio - A Python Library for Mist (coming soon)

We are working on building our own Python library that allows us to interact with the Mist cloud. We are constantly updating it and adding new features. This library helps us to save time when developing new scripts for customers.

Mist's Resources

Mist has also some really good resources available online that can help learn and use their API. We have gathered the best Mist resources in this section.

Mist API Class

Online course to learn how to use Mist APIs.
Link: https://api-class.mist.com

Mist API Collection for Postman

A collection of multiple API calls to be used directly into Postman. This is used to test API calls and study which data is sent back from the Mist cloud.
Link: https://explore.postman.com/api/4625/mist

API Documentation (need to be logged in)

This is the full API documentation detailing the structure of the data and which calls can be made.
Link: https://api.mist.com

Mist Wi-Fi Certification (need to be logged in)

This online certification course contains a section called "AI for IT Mist API". This chapter is an introduction to Mist's API and the power of automation.
Link: https://courses.mist.com/dashboard

Automation with APIs

This page is part of Mist's documentation. It gathers all resources related to APIs and automation.
Link: https://www.mist.com/documentation/category/api/

Other Useful Tools & Resources

This section presents tools that are useful in order to create your own automation scripts. It also present YouTube channels useful if you want to learn Python. Finally, we present Mist python libraries and utilities developed by other Engineers.