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171 views

Nexus PDF

Uploaded by

Nazeer Abdulrahman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CCIE Data Center

Unified Computing

Nexus 1000v, VM-FEX


and Adapter-FEX
Nexus 1000v
•  Just another Cisco modular chassis switch
•  Only difference – there is no cat (no physical hardware)
•  Creates a DVS or vDS in VMware (soon to be supported on Hyper-V)
•  Made up of
–  Virtual Supervisor Modules (VSM) (control and management plane)
–  Virtual Ethernet Modules (VEM) (data plane)
–  Can also include
•  Virtual Security Gateway (VSG)
•  ASA 1000v
•  vWAAS
•  uses vPath 2.0 for data interception/control
•  Each server in the data center is represented as a line card in the Cisco
Nexus 1000v and can be managed as if it were a line card in a physical
Cisco switch

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Nexus 1000v and UCS
•  UCS is compatible with Nexus 1000v
–  that is to say, they work well together, but one doesn’t need to
know of the other necessarily
•  N1Kv is compatible with vPC-HM if using MAC Pinning
•  N1Kv is not compatible with allocating “Dynamic vNICs” in
Service Profiles
–  Dynamic vNICs create VM-FEX
•  VM-FEX and N1Kv are mutually exclusive
–  But just to confuse you, Cisco used the same VEM to
implement this ;-)
–  I’ll unpack this more coming up in just a bit

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vPath
•  vPath protocol is always running in VEM
•  Directs traffic to VSN (Virtual Services Node),
applies security or optimization policy, sends
packet back to VEM along with ability to fast-
switch traffic now directly in VEM
•  Only new traffic flows must first be sent to
VSN, subsequent traffic forwarded directly by
VEM on ESX(i) host
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Installation
•  VSM installs Opaque Data in VMware vCenter for its DVS
–  Done using “svs connection”
–  Server Virtualization Switch (SVS)
•  VSMs and VEMs should all be same version
•  Control/Mgmt network should be low latency (more important than bw)
•  vCenter downloads this information to ESXi for VEMs to use whenever a
host is added to N1Kv-DVS
–  All VEM HB’s should increase at roughly same rate
•  sh mod vem counters (heartbeats)
–  Always hardcode VEM to Module number before you add ESXi host to N1Kv
•  Recommended to tie to UCS Chassis and Blade
•  Get UUID from ESXi Host:
–  #esxcfg-info –u
–  Be sure to use lowercase letters, else VEM will assign ESX(i) host to new VEM module #

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VEM Port Profiles
•  Two types
–  Eth (Uplink tied to HW ports)
–  vEth (Virtual tied to VMs)
•  “System” VLANs in Eth and vEth Port Profiles
–  Used to give immediate cut-through access to the
vmkernel

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Modes
•  L2
–  VEMs must be on same VLAN as VSM Control
VLAN
•  L3
–  VEM traffic is encap’d in UDP 4785
–  “capability l3control” needed on vEth profile used
for ESX(i) VMKernel before moving from vSwitch0
–  System VLAN for both vEth and Eth
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Port Channels in N1Kv
•  module vem 3 execute vemcmd show port
•  module vem 3 execute vemcmd show pinning

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UCS VM-FEX
•  Creates the same type of DVS in VMware as
N1Kv does
–  (now supported on KVM and Hyper-V in UCS 2.1)
•  Made up of
–  UCS acts as a sort of VSM (control and
management plane)
–  Virtual Ethernet Modules (VEM) (data plane)

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Adapter-FEX
•  Another Cisco FEX solution!
•  This time, used to extend a N5K down to a pizza-box C-
Series rack-mount server
–  More specifically, to FEX the P81E (Palo) or VIC1225 PCIe
CNA
–  Creates vEth and vFC ports in N5K
–  2 10GE SFP physical ports on PCIe card, each with 2 channels
•  Breaks out to 4 logical channels
•  Port 1, Channel 1 = Ethernet with F/O to physical port 2
•  Port 2, Channel 2 = Ethernet with F/O to physical port 1
•  Port 1, Channel 3 = HBA0 (no F/O, multipathing sw needed)
•  Port 2, Channel 4 = HBA1 (no F/O, multipathing sw needed)

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Adapter-FEX Alternative
•  Alternative is to have UCSM manage your C-Series
servers
•  Requires pair of N2232PP FEXs to act as the “IOM” in a
blade chassis
•  Requires 4 cables in UCS 2.0
–  Two 1GE cables connected from C-server LOM ports to 2232
FEX provide OOB control and management plane
–  Two 10GE cables connected from C-server SFP ports to 2232
FEX provide data plane
–  In UCS 2.1, “single wire management” means a single pair of
10GE cables from C-Server SFP ports to 2232 FEX provide
both data and management/control planes
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