Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Overview
Within a solution lifecycle
Day-0 stands for architecture and design
Day-1 includes activities such as installation, setup, and configuration
Day-2 operations include day-to-day management, monitoring, and optimizing the solution. In this case, Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a platform that lets you deploy tools that focus on the Day-2 phase.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a platform for the following services:
Insights: A comprehensive solution for analysis, trending, anomaly detection, alerting, and much more
Orchestrator: A solution to set up and operate multisite fabrics
Data Broker: A solution to build a packet broker network for further analysis
Fabric Controller: A solution to deploy Cisco NX-OS-based VXLAN fabrics
Fabric Discovery: A solution to monitor Cisco NX-OS fabrics
SAN Controller: A solution to deploy and monitor SAN fabrics
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insight
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights provides quite a few functions that you can use:
Root cause analysis: Identify, locate, analyze, and remediate the cause of a problem.
Error and packet drop detection: Identify where packet drops occur and their cause
Automated alerts and alerts explorer
Pre-change analysis and compliance alerts: Powerful planning tools
End-to-end workflows for automated problem remediation
Advisories on the impact of an upgrade
Mitigation and prevention of outages
Device hardening checks and software/hardware recommendations
Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) and End-of-Life notices on software - versions and equipment in your network
Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) Assist and Topology Checker
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO) is a tool that runs on top of a Cisco Nexus Dashboard cluster.
The main function of Cisco NDO is to configure, orchestrate, and monitor multiple data center sites with a common configuration.
These sites can either run networks based on Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) or Cisco Nexus switches in Cisco Nexus Operating System (NX-OS) mode managed by the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), formerly Data Center Network Manager (DCNM).
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator can be used to manage multiple data center sites, such as:
Cisco ACI-based sites
Cisco Cloud ACI sites
Cisco NDFC-based sites
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC)
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) is a comprehensive management and automation solution for all Cisco Nexus and Cisco Multilayer Distributed Switching (MDS) platforms powered by Cisco NX-OS.
Cisco NDFC provides management, automation, control, monitoring, and integration for deployments spanning LAN, SAN, and IP Fabric for Media (IPFM) fabrics. Cisco NDFC facilitates seamless interconnectivity, automation, and management for hybrid-cloud environments.
Three main functions of Cisco NDFC:
Management: Cisco NDFC gives you fabric-oriented configuration and operations management. It is optimized for large deployments with little overhead, but traditional deployments are supported and can be customized. Cisco NDFC also provides Representational State Transfer (RESTful) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), allowing easy integration with Cisco or third-party overlay managers.
Automation: You can use Cisco NDFC to bootstrap and deploy new fabrics in private and hybrid-cloud deployments. The Cisco best practices are built into the fabric builder policy templates. The automatic bootstrap occurs with the click of a button, reducing provisioning times and simplifying deployments.
Monitoring and visualization: Cisco NDFC maintain the active topology monitoring views per fabric into the new Cisco NDFC user interface. You can also combine it with Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI) to get advanced support for day-2 operations.
Focus areas of Cisco NDFC:
Single pane of glass for data center fabrics
VXLAN EVPN new deployment fabric provisioning and operation
VXLAN EVPN existing deployments fabric onboarding and operation
Classic LAN monitoring or operation
Specialty cases, such as IP Fabric for Media and SAN Controller roles
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker Application
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker provides pervasive packet and network visibility for network and security operations teams to programmatically manage aggregating, filtering, and forwarding complete flows to various analytics tools.
The main use cases of the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker include:
Consolidate monitored traffic flows and transports them to analysis devices
Configure the test access port (TAP) or Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) on production network switches
Manage the packet broker network
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker can be deployed in a few ways:
As an application in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Embedded in a switch, using guest shell
On a virtual machine or server outside TAP aggregation switches
As an application on Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), controller of a Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric
Physical and Virtual Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Physical
Cisco Nexus Dashboard cluster can be deployed by using at least three physical server nodes.
The physical Cisco Nexus Dashboard deployment runs on three server nodes, running on a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) C220 M5 chassis:
2 x 10-core 2.2GHz Intel Xeon Silver CPU
256GB of RAM
4 x 2.4-TB HDDs
400GB SSD
1.6-TB NVMe
4 x 25-G virtual interface card 1455
1050-W Power supply
Virtual
Two form factors of a virtual machine are available: App and Data. You select the appropriate ones depending on which Cisco Nexus Dashboard application you are planning to run. For example, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights require Data nodes, since they have more resources with the goal to accommodate requirements for telemetry streaming.
64 GB Memory
128 GB Memory
550G SSD
3TB SSD/NVMe
16 vCPUs
32 vCPUs
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Virtual Cisco Nexus Dashboard supports production deployments for Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC).
You also have two options to deploy virtual nodes in the public cloud:
Amazone Web Services (AWS) option:
Instance type: m5.4xlarge
Storage: 100-G gp2 SSD, 300-G gp2 SSD
Network: VPC
Azure option:
Instance type: Standard_D16s_v3
Storage: Operating system 50 GB; data 250/500 GB
Network: two VNETs
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Cluster Node Roles
Cisco Nexus Dashboard nodes can operate in one of three roles: master, worker, and standby.
Master nodes form the control plane of a cluster. A master node performs scheduling tasks when Point of Delivery (PODs) are instantiated based on the resources/load and maintains the state of the cluster, three nodes, and must be on the same form factor. It can also replace one master node at any time.
Worker nodes are used for horizontal scaling-out and to execute containers applications. Four additional nodes must be the same type as the master node (physical or virtual).
Standby nodes increase high availability in master node failure. Only a standby node can be promoted to a master node.
Depending on the application used, the application will dictate your maximum acceptable round-trip times (RTT) for members of the cluster. For example, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker require 150 ms RTT between cluster nodes, while the Cisco NDFC and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights require 50 ms. If all nodes are deployed in a single site, then this is not an issue but it can become an issue if cluster members are geographically spread.
Deployment and Placement of Nodes Across Sites:
When you plan your Cisco Nexus Dashboard deployment, a few factors influence the number of nodes in a cluster. The number of Cisco Nexus Dashboard nodes depends on the following:
Application being used
Number of switches being managed
Platform type: physical or virtual
Consult Cisco Nexus Dashboard Capacity Planning Tool: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/dcn/tools/nd-sizing/index.html
Nexus Dashboard OneView
Cisco Nexus Dashboard OneView provides a single cohesive view of all the sites that are being managed and the services that are installed across Cisco Nexus Dashboard clusters.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Federation is an association of several Cisco Nexus Dashboard clusters that allows working across with them as if they were a single entity and simplifies the consumption of their resources.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard clusters onboard other Cisco Nexus Dashboard clusters create a trusted environment, which allows you to learn about those clusters and to communicate and share information with each other.
Information shared between clusters is visible on each cluster within that federation. The data is also accessible from each cluster.
Apps can query information that relates to other clusters in the federation for purposes such as onboarding (for example, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights/Sites) or grouping.
Reference
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