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
VDC Management When several departments share a single physical device and each department has its own administrator, it presents a security concern to share one administrator account with every department admin. VDC user roles comes to the rescue here. Using VDC user roles, each VDC can be managed by a different VDC administrator. An action … Read more
VDC Configuration Table 5-7 summarizes the NX-OS CLI commands related to basic VDC configuration and verification. Table 5-7 Summary of NX-OS CLI Commands for VDC Configuration and Verification Command Purpose show resource Displays the VDC resource configuration for the current VDC. show vdc [vdc-name] Displays the VDC configuration information. show vdc detail Displays the VDC status … 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
Cisco Nexus Switch Process Separation and Restartability Cisco NX-OS provides isolation between software components so that a failure within one process does not disrupt others. In the Cisco NX-OS software, independent processes, known as services, perform a function or set of functions for a subsystem or feature set. Each service and service instance runs as … 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
VDC Architecture The Cisco NX-OS software provides the base upon which the VDCs are supported. Figure 5-5 shows NX-OS in VDC mode. Figure 5-5 NX-OS in VDC Mode At the heart of the NX-OS, are the kernel and infrastructure layer. The kernel supports all processes and all VDCs that run on the switch, but … Read more
VDC Types The use of VDCs with the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Supervisor 2E or 3E modules allows a single Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switch to be partitioned into up to eight VDCs: the default VDC and seven additional VDCs. Another available choice is to create one admin VDC and eight additional VDCs. More than … Read more