Where to start with the Nexus 1000V

jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
in Virtualization
I am currently designing a new vSphere cluster which runs perfectly in the lab so far. We were talking about ACLs and protected ports so naturally the Nexus 1000V was brought up. Now the executives want to see the Nexus in action but the more I read about it - the more I get confused.

Anyone implemented the Nexus yet ?
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  • astorrsastorrs Member Posts: 3,139 ■■■■■■□□□□
    Yup.

    First question, do they have vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses (or are they willing to acquire them)?
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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    astorrs wrote: »
    Yup.

    First question, do they have vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses (or are they willing to acquire them)?

    Oh yea. We are vmware enterprise partner and we will provide the licenses which are solely Enterprise Plus ones ...
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  • astorrsastorrs Member Posts: 3,139 ■■■■■■□□□□
    Gomjaba wrote: »
    Oh yea. We are vmware enterprise partner and we will provide the licenses which are solely Enterprise Plus ones ...
    They the best thing I can suggest is to throw vSphere in a lab (even a single host is fine) and download an eval from Cisco's site for the Nexus 1000V and get your feet wet.

    It's based on NX-OS (like the other Nexus equipment) which is essentially a combination of IOS (from Cisco's routers/switches) and SAN-OS (from their MDS line of FCP switches).

    Once you've got it downloaded grab a copy of the Cisco Nexus 1000V Getting Started Guide, Release 4.0(4)SV(1) and work your way through it. You might also want to read the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches Deployment Guide so you understand best practices for deploying it, etc.

    One thing to make note of in the back of your head, I would recommend keeping your Management (ESXi) or Service Console (ESX) ports on classic vSwitches and avoid linking them to dvSwitches (I refuse to use the acronym vDS) or the Nexus 1000V.
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  • jibbajabbajibbajabba Member Posts: 4,317 ■■■■■■■■□□
    astorrs wrote: »
    They the best thing I can suggest is to throw vSphere in a lab (even a single host is fine) and download an eval from Cisco's site for the Nexus 1000V and get your feet wet.

    It's based on NX-OS (like the other Nexus equipment) which is essentially a combination of IOS (from Cisco's routers/switches) and SAN-OS (from their MDS line of FCP switches).

    Once you've got it downloaded grab a copy of the Cisco Nexus 1000V Getting Started Guide, Release 4.0(4)SV(1) and work your way through it. You might also want to read the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches Deployment Guide so you understand best practices for deploying it, etc.

    One thing to make note of in the back of your head, I would recommend keeping your Management (ESXi) or Service Console (ESX) ports on classic vSwitches and avoid linking them to dvSwitches (I refuse to use the acronym vDS) or the Nexus 1000V.

    I am lucky enough to say that I have my own three node cluster in a lab :) Took me a while to convince my manager that I NEED that but yay :) This is what I am currently playing with .. just moved to distributed switches but I can see the logic behind it to leave Management on vswitches ...

    The only thing I am concerned about the nexus is really the "what if" factor .. I can imagine that IF something is wrong with the virtual appliances that the whole network is down which might kick hundreds of server off the network. Sure I will have at least the Service Console, but it might still be a pain to uninstall the nexus and goe back to either vswitches or distributed switches ..
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  • astorrsastorrs Member Posts: 3,139 ■■■■■■□□□□
    Gomjaba wrote: »
    The only thing I am concerned about the nexus is really the "what if" factor .. I can imagine that IF something is wrong with the virtual appliances that the whole network is down which might kick hundreds of server off the network. Sure I will have at least the Service Console, but it might still be a pain to uninstall the nexus and goe back to either vswitches or distributed switches ..
    There are two parts to the Nexus 1000V, the VEM is a part of the vmkernel on each host and is totally independent, the VSM (the virtual appliance - which can be redundant) is for central configuration/management. Once changes are made there, they are pushed to the VEMs which continue to operate with their config if the VSM goes offline.

    Basically the same way VMware HA works, you can't configure it without vCenter but once configured it will still function whether or not vCenter is running.
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  • astorrsastorrs Member Posts: 3,139 ■■■■■■□□□□
    Oh and just so I'm clear, the only part that gets "installed" is the VSM, the VEM already exists on every copy of vSphere as it's integrated into the VMware ESX(i) kernel - it's not an after-market add-on - updates to it go through VMware.
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