Cisco NX-OS Forwarding Architecture The Cisco NX-OS forwarding architecture is responsible for processing all routing updates and populating the forwarding information to all modules in the chassis. The Cisco NX-OS forwarding architecture consists of multiple components, as shown in Figure 6-6. Figure 6-6 Cisco NX-OS Forwarding Architecture The unicast routing information base (URIB) exists … Read more
Optimal Path Determination Routing protocols use a metric to evaluate the best path to the destination. A metric is a standard of measurement, such as a path bandwidth, that routing algorithms use to determine the optimal path to a destination. To aid path determination, routing algorithms initialize and maintain routing tables that contain route information … Read more
Communicating Between VDCs Cisco NX-OS software does not support direct communication between VDCs on a single physical device. You must make a physical connection from a port that is allocated to one VDC to a port that is allocated to another VDC to allow the VDCs to communicate. You must use the front panel port … Read more
VDC High Availability The Cisco NX-OS software platform incorporates a high-availability feature set that helps ensure minimal or no effect on the data plane should the control plane fail. Different high-availability service levels are provided, from service restart to stateful supervisor switchover to ISSU without affecting data traffic. Should a control plane failure occur, the … Read more
Cisco Nexus Switch Functional Planes The Cisco Nexus switch by design divides the traffic it manages into three functional components or planes: The Cisco NX-OS device provides control plane policing (CoPP), which protects the control plane and separates it from the data plane, thus ensuring network stability, reachability, and packet delivery. The CoPP feature allows … Read more
Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) Cisco NX-OS supports multiple virtual routing and forwarding instances (VRFs). Each VRF contains a separate address space with unicast and multicast route tables for IPv4 and IPv6 and makes routing decisions independent of any other VRF. Each NX-OS device has a default VRF and a management VRF. All Layer 3 … Read more
Cisco Nexus 7000 VDCs VDCs partition a single physical device into multiple logical devices that provide fault isolation, management isolation, address allocation isolation, service differentiation domains, and adaptive resource management. In simple terms, VDCs enable the virtualization of the control plane, data plane, and management plane of a switch, along with its hardware resource virtualization. … Read more