In Apstra deployments that use on-box device agents, the agent package installs multiple processes inside the switch’s NOS namespace to provide an isolated runtime environment for Apstra control and telemetry collection. Two of those processes are the Telemetry Agent and the Deployment Agent. The Telemetry Agent is responsible for collecting operational information from the device—such as LLDP neighbor details, routing-related state, and interface information—and sending that telemetry upstream to Apstra. This telemetry is a key input for closed-loop assurance in EVPN-VXLAN fabrics, where Apstra correlates underlay health (interfaces, neighbors, sessions) with overlay services.
The Deployment Agent is responsible for receiving configuration content pushed from Apstra and applying it on the device. In a Junos v24.4 fabric, this is the component that enables Apstra to converge device configuration to the blueprint’s intent (for example, BGP underlay, EVPN signaling, and VXLAN constructs) without requiring manual CLI workflows. Both agents are typically idle most of the time, becoming active when Apstra needs to apply configuration changes or when significant state changes trigger telemetry updates.
Other listed options—“routing agent” and “authentication agent”—are not the named Apstra device-agent processes described for the on-box agent package in Juniper documentation.
Verified Juniper sources (URLs):
https://www.juniper.net/documentation/us/en/software/apstra4.2/apstra-server-and-security-guide/topics/concept/apstra-device-agents.html
