Published: October 2022

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Document Organization

This document is organized into the following:

·    Executive Summary

·    Solution Overview

·    Technology Overview

·    Solution Design

·    Deployment Hardware and Software

·    Appendix

·    About the Authors

About the Cisco Validated Design Program

The Cisco Validated Design (CVD) program consists of systems and solutions designed, tested, and documented to facilitate faster, more reliable, and more predictable customer deployments. For more information, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/designzone.

Executive Summary

The FlexPod Datacenter solution is a validated approach for deploying Cisco® and NetApp technologies and products to build shared private and public cloud infrastructure. Cisco and NetApp have partnered to deliver a series of FlexPod solutions that enable strategic data-center platforms. The success of the FlexPod solution is driven through its ability to evolve and incorporate both technology and product innovations in the areas of management, compute, storage, and networking. This document explains the design details of incorporating the Cisco X-Series modular platform with end-to-end 100Gbps networking into the FlexPod Datacenter and the ability to monitor and manage FlexPod components from the cloud using Cisco Intersight. Some of the key advantages of integrating Cisco UCS X-Series into the FlexPod infrastructure are:

·    Simpler and programmable infrastructure: infrastructure as code delivered through a single partner integrable open API

·    End-to-End 100Gbps Ethernet: utilizing the 5th Generation Cisco UCS VIC 15231, the 5th Generation Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect, and the UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Module to deliver 100Gbps Ethernet from the server through the network to the storage

·    End-to-End 32Gbps Fibre Channel: utilizing the 5th Generation Cisco UCS VIC 15231, the 5th Generation Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect, and the UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Module to deliver 32Gbps Ethernet from the server (via 100Gbps FCoE) through the network to the storage

·    Innovative cloud operations: continuous feature delivery and no need for maintaining on-premise virtual machines supporting management functions

·    Built for investment protections: design ready for future technologies such as liquid cooling and high-Wattage CPUs; CXL-ready

In addition to the compute-specific hardware and software innovations, the integration of the Cisco Intersight cloud platform with VMware vCenter and NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager delivers monitoring, orchestration, and workload optimization capabilities for different layers (virtualization and storage) of the FlexPod infrastructure. The modular nature of the Cisco Intersight platform also provides an easy upgrade path to additional services, such as workload optimization.

Customers interested in understanding the FlexPod design and deployment details, including the configuration of various elements of design and associated best practices, should refer to Cisco Validated Designs for FlexPod, here: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/design-zone/data-center-design-guides/flexpod-design-guides.html.

Solution Overview

This chapter contains the following:

·    Introduction

·    Audience

·    Purpose of this Document

·    What’s New in this Release?

·    Solution Summary

Introduction

The Cisco Unified Compute System (Cisco UCS) with Intersight Managed Mode (IMM) is a modular compute system, configured and managed from the cloud. It is designed to meet the needs of modern applications and to improve operational efficiency, agility, and scale through an adaptable, future-ready, modular design. The Cisco Intersight platform is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) infrastructure lifecycle management platform that delivers simplified configuration, deployment, maintenance, and support.

Powered by the Cisco Intersight cloud-operations platform, the Cisco UCS with X-Series enables the next-generation cloud-operated FlexPod infrastructure that not only simplifies data-center management but also allows the infra-structure to adapt to the unpredictable needs of modern applications as well as traditional workloads. With the Cisco Intersight platform, customers get all the benefits of SaaS delivery and the full lifecycle management of Inter-sight-connected distributed servers and integrated NetApp storage systems across data centers, remote sites, branch offices, and edge environments.

Audience

The intended audience of this document includes but is not limited to IT architects, sales engineers, field consultants, professional services, IT managers, partner engineering, and customers who want to take advantage of an infrastructure built to deliver IT efficiency and enable IT innovation.

Purpose of this Document

This document provides design guidance around incorporating the Cisco Intersight—managed Cisco UCS X-Series platform with end-to-end 100Gbps within FlexPod Datacenter infrastructure. The document introduces various design elements and explains various considerations and best practices for a successful deployment. The document also highlights the design and product requirements for integrating virtualization and storage systems to Cisco Intersight to deliver a true cloud-based integrated approach to infrastructure management.

What’s New in this Release?

The following design elements distinguish this version of FlexPod from previous models:

·    End-to-End 100Gbps Ethernet and 32Gbps Fibre Channel in FlexPod Datacenter

·    Integration of the 5th Generation Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect into FlexPod Datacenter

·    Integration of the 5th Generation Cisco UCS 15000-series VICs into FlexPod Datacenter

·    Integration of the Cisco UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Module into the X-Series 9508 Chassis

·    Integration of the Cisco UCS C225 and C245 M6 Servers with AMD EPYC CPUs

·    Addition of the Non-Volatile Memory Express over Transmission Control Protocol (NVMe-TCP) Storage Protocol with NetApp ONTAP 9.11.1

·    An integrated, more complete end-to-end Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Day 0 configuration of the FlexPod Infrastructure utilizing Ansible Scripts

·    VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 3

·    Integration with the FlexPod XCS Integrated System in Cisco Intersight

Solution Summary

The FlexPod Datacenter solution with Cisco UCS X-Series VMware 7.0 U3 and NetApp ONTAP 9.11.1 offers the following key customer benefits:

·    Simplified cloud-based management of solution components

·    Hybrid-cloud-ready, policy-driven modular design

·    Highly available and scalable platform with flexible architecture that supports various deployment models

·    Cooperative support model and Cisco Solution Support

·    Easy to deploy, consume, and manage architecture, which saves time and resources required to research, procure, and integrate off-the-shelf components

·    Support for component monitoring, solution automation and orchestration, and workload optimization

Like all other FlexPod solution designs, FlexPod Datacenter with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet is configurable according to demand and usage. Customers can purchase exactly the infrastructure they need for their current application requirements and can then scale up by adding more resources to the FlexPod system or scale out by adding more FlexPod instances. By moving the management from the fabric interconnects into the cloud, the solution can respond to the speed and scale of customer deployments with a constant stream of new capabilities delivered from Intersight software-as-a-service model at cloud-scale. For customers that require management within the secure site, Cisco Intersight is also offered within an on-site appliance with both connected and not connected or air gap options.

Technology Overview

This chapter contains the following:

·    FlexPod Datacenter

·    Infrastructure as Code with AnsibleInfrastructure as Code with Ansible

·    Cisco Unified Compute System X-Series

·    Cisco Intersight

·    Cisco Nexus Switching Fabric

·    Cisco MDS 9132T 32G Multilayer Fabric Switch

·    Cisco MDS 9148V 64G 48-Port Fibre Channel Switch

·    Cisco DCNM-SAN

·    NetApp AFF A-Series Storage

·    VMware vSphere 7.0 U2

·    Cisco Intersight Assist Device Connector for VMware vCenter and NetApp ONTAP

FlexPod Datacenter

FlexPod Datacenter architecture is built using the following infrastructure components for compute, network, and storage:

·    Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS)

·    Cisco Nexus® and Cisco MDS switches

·    NetApp All Flash FAS (AFF), FAS, and All SAN Array (ASA) storage systems

Figure 1. FlexPod Datacenter Components

All the FlexPod components have been integrated so that customers can deploy the solution quickly and economically while eliminating many of the risks associated with researching, designing, building, and deploying similar solutions from the foundation. One of the main benefits of FlexPod is its ability to maintain consistency at scale. Each of the component families shown in Figure 1 (Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus, Cisco MDS, and NetApp controllers) offers platform and resource options to scale up or scale out the infrastructure while supporting the same features.

The FlexPod Datacenter solution with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet is built using the following hardware components:

·    Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis with Cisco UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Modules and up to eight Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes

·    Fifth-generation Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects to support 10/25/40/100GbE and 16/32GbFC connectivity from various components

·    High-speed Cisco NX-OS-based Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switching design to support up to 100GE connectivity and optional 32G FC connectivity

·    Cisco MDS 9132T switches to support 32G FC connectivity

·    NetApp AFF A800 (and AFF A400) end-to-end NVMe storage with up to 100GE connectivity and 32G FC connectivity

The software components of the solution consist of:

·    Cisco Intersight platform to deploy the UCS components, and maintain and support the FlexPod components

·    Cisco Intersight Assist Virtual Appliance to help connect NetApp AIQUM, Cisco Nexus Switches, and VMware vCenter to Cisco Intersight

·    NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager to monitor and manage the storage and for NetApp ONTAP integration with Cisco Intersight

·    VMware vCenter to set up and manage the virtual infrastructure as well as Cisco Intersight integration

Infrastructure as Code with Ansible

This FlexPod solution provides a fully automated solution deployment that explains all sections of the infrastructure and application layer. The configuration of the NetApp ONTAP Storage, Cisco Network and Compute, and VMware layers are automated by leveraging Ansible playbooks that have been developed to setup the components as per the solution best practices that were identified during the testing and validation.

Note:   There are two modes to configure Cisco UCS, one is UCSM (UCS Managed) and the other is IMM (Intersight Managed Mode). Here, the Ansible scripts will configure Cisco UCS in IMM mode.

The automated deployment using Ansible provides a well-defined sequence of execution across the different constituents of this solution. Certain phases of the deployment also involve the exchange of parameters or attributes between compute, network, storage, and virtualization and also involve some manual intervention. All phases have been clearly demarcated and the implementation with automation is split into equivalent phases via Ansible playbooks with a tag-based execution of a specific section of the component’s configuration.

Figure 2. Infrastructure as Code with Ansible

As illustrated in Figure 2Figure 2, the Ansible playbooks to configure the different sections of the solution invoke a set of Roles and consume the associated variables that are required to setup the solution. The variables needed for this solution can be split into two categories – user input and defaults/ best practices. Based on the installation environment customers can choose to modify the variables to suit their requirements and proceed with the automated installation.

Note:   The automation for ONTAP is scalable in nature that can configure anywhere from a single HA pair to a fully scaled 24 node ONTAP cluster.

After the base infrastructure is setup with NetApp ONTAP, Cisco Network and Compute, and VMware, customers can also deploy the FlexPod Management Tools like ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere formerly Virtual Storage Console, SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere, and Active IQ Unified Manager in an automated fashion.

Cisco Unified Compute System X-Series

The Cisco UCS X-Series Modular System is designed to take the current generation of the Cisco UCS platform to the next level with its future-ready design and cloud-based management. Decoupling and moving the platform management to the cloud allows Cisco UCS to respond to customer feature and scalability requirements in a much faster and efficient manner. Cisco UCS X-Series state of the art hardware simplifies the data-center design by providing flexible server options. A single server type, supporting a broader range of workloads, results in fewer different data-center products to manage and maintain. The Cisco Intersight cloud-management platform manages Cisco UCS X-Series as well as integrating with third-party devices, including VMware vCenter and NetApp storage, to provide visibility, optimization, and orchestration from a single platform, thereby driving agility and deployment consistency.

Figure 3. Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis

Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis

The Cisco UCS X-Series chassis is engineered to be adaptable and flexible. As seen in Figure 4, the Cisco UCS X9508 chassis has only a power-distribution midplane. This midplane-free design provides fewer obstructions for better airflow. For I/O connectivity, vertically oriented compute nodes intersect with horizontally oriented fabric modules, allowing the chassis to support future fabric innovations. Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis’ superior packaging enables larger compute nodes, thereby providing more space for actual compute components, such as memory, GPU, drives, and accelerators. Improved airflow through the chassis enables support for higher power components, and more space allows for future thermal solutions (such as liquid cooling) without limitations.

Figure 4. Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis – Midplane Free Design

The Cisco UCS X9508 7-Rack-Unit (7RU) chassis has eight flexible slots. These slots can house a combination of compute nodes and a pool of current and future I/O resources that includes GPU accelerators, disk storage, and nonvolatile memory. At the top rear of the chassis are two Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs) that connect the chassis to upstream Cisco UCS 6400 or 6500 Series Fabric Interconnects. At the bottom rear of the chassis are slots to house X-Fabric modules that can flexibly connect the compute nodes with I/O devices. Six 2800W Power Supply Units (PSUs) provide 54V power to the chassis with N, N+1, and N+N redundancy. A higher voltage allows efficient power delivery with less copper and reduced power loss. Efficient, 100mm, dual counter-rotating fans deliver industry-leading airflow and power efficiency, and optimized thermal algorithms enable different cooling modes to best support the customer’s environment.

Cisco UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Modules

In the end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet design, for the Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis, the network connectivity is provided by a pair of Cisco UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs). Like the fabric extenders used in the Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis, these modules carry all network traffic to a pair of Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects (FIs). IFMs also host the Chassis Management Controller (CMC) for chassis management. In contrast to systems with fixed networking components, Cisco UCS X9508’s midplane-free design enables easy upgrades to new networking technologies as they emerge making it straightforward to accommodate new network speeds or technologies in the future.

Figure 5. Cisco UCSX-I-9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Module

Each IFM supports eight 100Gb uplink ports for connecting the Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis to the FIs and 8 100Gb server ports for the eight compute nodes. IFM server ports can provide up to 200 Gbps of unified fabric connectivity per compute node across the two IFMs. The uplink ports connect the chassis to the UCS FIs, providing up to 1600Gbps connectivity across the two IFMs. The unified fabric carries management, VM, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) traffic to the FIs, where management traffic is routed to the Cisco Intersight cloud operations platform, FCoE traffic is forwarded to either native Fibre Channel interfaces through unified ports on the FI (to Cisco MDS switches) or to FCoE uplinks (to Cisco Nexus switches supporting SAN switching), and data Ethernet traffic is forwarded upstream to the data center network (using Cisco Nexus switches).

Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Node

The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis is designed to host up to 8 Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes. The hardware details of the Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes are shown in Figure 6:

Figure 6. Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Node

The Cisco UCS X210c M6 features:

·    CPU: Up to 2x 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors with up to 40 cores per processor and 1.5 MB Level 3 cache per core.

·    Memory: Up to 32 x 256 GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs for a maximum of 8 TB of main memory. The Compute Node can also be configured for up to 16 x 512-GB Intel Optane persistent memory DIMMs for a maximum of 12 TB of memory.

·    Disk storage: Up to 6 SAS or SATA drives can be configured with an internal RAID controller, or customers can configure up to 6 NVMe drives. 2 M.2 memory cards can be added to the Compute Node with RAID 1 mirroring.

·    Virtual Interface Card (VIC): Up to 2 VICs including an mLOM Cisco VIC 15231 or an mLOM Cisco VIC 14425 and a mezzanine Cisco VIC card 14825 can be installed in a Compute Node.

·    Security: The server supports an optional Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Additional security features include a secure boot FPGA and ACT2 anticounterfeit provisions.

Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards (VICs)

Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes support the following three Cisco VIC cards:

Cisco VIC 15231

Cisco VIC 15231 fits the mLOM slot in the Cisco X210c Compute Node and enables up to 100 Gbps of unified fabric connectivity to each of the chassis IFMs for a total of 200 Gbps of connectivity per server. Cisco VIC 15231 connectivity to the IFM and up to the fabric interconnects is delivered through 100Gbps. Cisco VIC 15231 supports 512 virtual interfaces (both FCoE and Ethernet) along with the latest networking innovations such as NVMeoF over FC or TCP, VxLAN/NVGRE offload, and so forth.

Figure 7. Cisco VIC 15231 in Cisco UCS X210c M6

The network interface speed of the network interfaces with Cisco VIC 15231 is 100 Gbps as shown below.

Figure 8. Adapter Speed VIC 15231 in Cisco UCS X210c M6

Cisco VIC 14425

Cisco VIC 14425 fits the mLOM slot in the Cisco X210c Compute Node and enables up to 50 Gbps of unified fabric connectivity to each of the chassis IFMs for a total of 100 Gbps of connectivity per server. Cisco VIC 14425 connectivity to the IFM and up to the fabric interconnects is delivered through 4x 25-Gbps connections, which are configured automatically as 2x 50-Gbps port channels. Cisco VIC 14425 supports 256 virtual interfaces (both Fibre Channel and Ethernet) along with the latest networking innovations such as NVMeoF over RDMA (ROCEv2), VxLAN/NVGRE offload, and so on.

Figure 9. Single Cisco VIC 14425 in Cisco UCS X210c M6

The connections between the 4th generation Cisco VIC (Cisco UCS VIC 1440) plus Port Expander in the Cisco UCS B200 blades and the I/O modules in the Cisco UCS 5108 chassis comprise of multiple 10Gbps KR lanes. The same connections between Cisco VIC 14425 and IFMs in Cisco UCS X-Series comprise of multiple 25Gbps KR lanes resulting in higher speed connectivity in Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes. The network interface speed comparison between VMware ESXi installed on Cisco UCS B200 M6 with VIC 1440 plus Port Expander and Cisco UCS X210c M6 with VIC 14425 is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10.              Network Interface Speed Comparison

Cisco VIC 14825

The optional Cisco VIC 14825 fits the mezzanine slot on the server. A bridge card (UCSX-V4-BRIDGE) extends this VIC’s 2x 50 Gbps of network connections up to the mLOM slot and out through the mLOM’s IFM connectors, bringing the total bandwidth to 100 Gbps per fabric for a total bandwidth of 200 Gbps per server.

Figure 11.              Cisco VIC 14425 and 14825 in Cisco UCS X210c M6

Cisco UCS C225 M6 and C245 M6 Rack Servers

The Cisco UCS C225 M6 and UCS C245 Rack Servers extend the capabilities of Cisco’s UCS portfolio with the addition of the AMD EPYC CPUs as well as 16 DIMM slots per CPU for 3200-MHz DDR4 DIMMs with individual DIMM capacity points up to 256 GB. The maximum memory capacity for 2 CPUs is 8 TB (for 32 x 256 GB DDR4 DIMMs1). The Cisco UCS C225M6 has a 1-Rack-Unit (RU) form factor while the Cisco UCS C245 has a 2-RU form factor and can hold more GPUs than the C225. These servers can connect directly to the Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects at 2x100Gbps with 4th Generation Cisco UCS VIC 1477 and 1495. These servers can also connect directly to the Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects via 4x25G to 100G breakout cables with the 5th Generation VIC 15428 and 4th Generation VICs 1467 and 1455. The Cisco UCS C-series servers can also connect to the FI 6536 using the Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX3 in FEX-mode.

Figure 12.              Cisco UCS C225 M6 Rack Server

Figure 13.              Cisco UCS C245 M6 Rack Server

Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects

The Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects (FIs) provide a single point for connectivity and management for the entire Cisco UCS system. Typically deployed as an active/active pair, the system’s FIs integrate all components into a single, highly available management domain controlled by Cisco Intersight (currently the Cisco UCS 6536 does not support Cisco UCS Manager). Cisco UCS FIs provide a single unified fabric for the system, with low-latency, lossless, cut-through switching that supports LAN, SAN, and management traffic using a single set of cables.

Figure 14.              Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect

The Cisco UCS 6536 utilized in the current design is a 36-port Fabric Interconnect. This single RU device includes up to 36 10/25/40/100 Gbps Ethernet ports, 16 8/16/32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports via 4 128 Gbps to 4x32 Gbps breakouts on ports 33-36. All 36 ports support breakout cables or QSA interfaces.

Note:   The Cisco UCS 6536 FI currently only supports Intersight Managed Mode (IMM). This option replaces the local UCS management with Cisco Intersight cloud- or appliance-based management.

Cisco Intersight

The Cisco Intersight platform is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) infrastructure lifecycle management platform that delivers simplified configuration, deployment, maintenance, and support. The Cisco Intersight platform is designed to be modular, so customers can adopt services based on their individual requirements. The platform significantly simplifies IT operations by bridging applications with infrastructure, providing visibility and management from bare-metal servers and hypervisors to serverless applications, thereby reducing costs and mitigating risk. This unified SaaS platform uses a unified Open API design that natively integrates with third-party platforms and tools.

Figure 15.              Cisco Intersight Overview

The main benefits of Cisco Intersight infrastructure services are as follows:

·    Simplify daily operations by automating many daily manual tasks

·    Combine the convenience of a SaaS platform with the capability to connect from anywhere and manage infrastructure through a browser or mobile app

·    Stay ahead of problems and accelerate trouble resolution through advanced support capabilities

·    Gain global visibility of infrastructure health and status along with advanced management and support capabilities

·    Upgrade to add workload optimization and other services when needed

Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance and Private Virtual Appliance

In addition to the SaaS deployment model running on Intersight.com, on-premises options can be purchased separately. The Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance and Cisco Intersight Private Virtual Appliance are available for organizations that have additional data locality or security requirements for managing systems. The Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance delivers the management features of the Cisco Intersight platform in an easy-to-deploy VMware Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) or Microsoft Hyper-V Server virtual machine that allows you to control the system details that leave your premises. The Cisco Intersight Private Virtual Appliance is provided in a form factor specifically designed for users who operate in disconnected (air gap) environments. The Private Virtual Appliance requires no connection to public networks or back to Cisco to operate.

Cisco Intersight Assist

Cisco Intersight Assist helps customers add endpoint devices to Cisco Intersight. A data center could have multiple devices that do not connect directly with Cisco Intersight. Any device that is supported by Cisco Intersight, but does not connect directly with it, will need a connection mechanism. Cisco Intersight Assist provides that connection mechanism. In FlexPod, VMware vCenter and NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager connect to Intersight with the help of Intersight Assist VM.

Cisco Intersight Assist is available within the Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance, which is distributed as a deployable virtual machine contained within an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) file format. More details about the Cisco Intersight Assist VM deployment configuration is explained in later sections.

Licensing Requirements

The Cisco Intersight platform uses a subscription-based license with multiple tiers. Customers can purchase a subscription duration of one, three, or five years and choose the required Cisco UCS server volume tier for the selected subscription duration. Each Cisco endpoint automatically includes a Cisco Intersight Base license at no additional cost when customers access the Cisco Intersight portal and claim a device. Customers can purchase any of the following higher-tier Cisco Intersight licenses using the Cisco ordering tool:

·    Cisco Intersight Essentials: Essentials includes all the functions of the Base license plus additional features, including Cisco UCS Central Software and Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC) supervisor entitlement, policy-based configuration with server profiles, firmware management, and evaluation of compatibility with the Cisco Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

·    Cisco Intersight Advantage: Advantage offers all the features and functions of the Base and Essentials tiers. It includes storage widgets and cross-domain inventory correlation across compute, storage, and virtual environments (VMWare ESXi). It also includes OS installation for supported Cisco UCS platforms.

·    Cisco Intersight Premier: In addition to all of the functions provided in the Advantage tier, Premier includes full subscription entitlement for Intersight Orchestrator, which provides orchestration across Cisco UCS and third-party systems.

Servers in the Cisco Intersight managed mode require at least the Essentials license. For more information about the features provided in the various licensing tiers, see https://intersight.com/help/getting_started#licensing_requirements.

Cisco Nexus Switching Fabric

The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches offer both modular and fixed 1/10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet switch configurations with scalability up to 60 Tbps of nonblocking performance with less than five-microsecond latency, wire speed VXLAN gateway, bridging, and routing support.

Figure 16.              Cisco Nexus 933360YC-FX2 Switch

The Cisco Nexus 9000 series switch featured in this design is the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 configured in NX-OS standalone mode. NX-OS is a purpose-built data-center operating system designed for performance, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and programmability at its foundation. It provides a robust and comprehensive feature set that meets the demanding requirements of virtualization and automation.

The Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switch is a 2RU switch that supports 7.2 Tbps of bandwidth and 2.4 bpps. The 96 downlink ports on the 93360YC-FX2 can support 1-, 10-, or 25-Gbps Ethernet or 16- or 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports, offering deployment flexibility and investment protection. The 12 uplink ports can be configured as 40- or 100-Gbps Ethernet, offering flexible migration options. This switch was chosen for this solution because of the extra flexibility and scaling the 12 40- or 100-Gbps uplink ports offer.

The Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX, 93360YC-FX2, and 9336C-FX2-E switches now support SAN switching, allowing both Ethernet and Fibre Channel SAN switching in a single switch. In addition to 16- or 32-Gbps Fibre Channel, these switches also support 100-Gbps FCoE, allowing port-channeled 100-Gbps FCoE uplinks from the Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects to Cisco Nexus switches in SAN switching mode.

Cisco MDS 9132T 32G Multilayer Fabric Switch

The Cisco MDS 9132T 32G Multilayer Fabric Switch is the current generation of the highly reliable, flexible, and low-cost Cisco MDS 9100 Series switches. It combines high performance with exceptional flexibility and cost effectiveness. This powerful, compact one Rack-Unit (1RU) switch scales from 8 to 32 line-rate 32 Gbps Fibre Channel ports.

Figure 17.              Cisco MDS 9132T 32G Multilayer Fabric Switch

The Cisco MDS 9132T delivers advanced storage networking features and functions with ease of management and compatibility with the entire Cisco MDS 9000 family portfolio for reliable end-to-end connectivity. This switch also offers state-of-the-art SAN analytics and telemetry capabilities that have been built into this next-generation hardware platform. This new state-of-the-art technology couples the next-generation port ASIC with a fully dedicated network processing unit designed to complete analytics calculations in real time. The telemetry data extracted from the inspection of the frame headers are calculated on board (within the switch) and, using an industry-leading open format, can be streamed to any analytics-visualization platform. This switch also includes a dedicated 10/100/1000BASE-T telemetry port to maximize data delivery to any telemetry receiver, including Cisco Data Center Network Manager.

Cisco MDS 9148V 64G 48-Port Fibre Channel Switch

The next-generation Cisco MDS 9148V 64-Gbps 48-Port Fibre Channel Switch (Figure 18) supports 64, 32, and 16 Gbps Fibre Channel ports and provides high-speed Fibre Channel connectivity for all-flash arrays and high-performance hosts. This switch offers state-of-the-art analytics and telemetry capabilities built into its next-generation Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chipset. This switch allows seamless transition to Fibre Channel Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe/FC) workloads whenever available without any hardware upgrade in the SAN. It empowers small, midsize, and large enterprises that are rapidly deploying cloud-scale applications using extremely dense virtualized servers, providing the benefits of greater bandwidth, scale, and consolidation. This switch is now orderable from Cisco, is supported in FlexPod, but was not validated in this design.

Figure 18.              Cisco MDS 9148V 64G 48-Port Fibre Channel Switch

The Cisco MDS 9148V delivers advanced storage networking features and functions with ease of management and compatibility with the entire Cisco MDS 9000 family portfolio for reliable end-to-end connectivity. This switch also offers state-of-the-art SAN analytics and telemetry capabilities that have been built into this next-generation hardware platform. This new state-of-the-art technology couples the next-generation Cisco port ASIC with a fully dedicated network processing unit designed to complete analytics calculations in real time. The telemetry data extracted from the inspection of the frame headers are calculated on board (within the switch) and, using an industry-leading open format, can be streamed to any analytics-visualization platform. This switch also includes a dedicated 10/100/1000BASE-T telemetry port to maximize data delivery to any telemetry receiver, including Cisco Data Center Network Manager.

Cisco DCNM-SAN

Cisco DCNM-SAN can be used to monitor, configure, and analyze Cisco 32Gbps Fibre Channel fabrics and show information about the Cisco Nexus switching fabric. Cisco DCNM-SAN is deployed as a virtual appliance from an OVA and is managed through a web browser. Once the Cisco MDS and Nexus switches are added with the appropriate credentials and licensing, monitoring of the SAN and Ethernet fabrics can begin. Additionally, VSANs, device aliases, zones, and zone sets can be added, modified, and deleted using the DCNM point-and-click interface. Device Manager can also be used to configure the Cisco MDS switches. SAN Analytics can be added to Cisco MDS switches to provide insights into the fabric by allowing customers to monitor, analyze, identify, and troubleshoot performance issues. Cisco DCNM-SAN has been renamed Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), which is a Cisco Nexus Dashboard App. However, as of the publishing date of this CVD, Cisco DCNM 11.5(4) was the suggested release and was what was used in this CVD. The next FlexPod CVD will use NDFC as part of Nexus Dashboard.

Cisco DCNM integration with Cisco Intersight

The Cisco Network Insights Base (Cisco NI Base) application provides several TAC assist functionalities which are useful when working with Cisco TAC. The Cisco NI Base app collects the CPU, device name, device product id, serial number, version, memory, device type, and disk usage information for the nodes in the fabric. Cisco NI Base application is connected to the Cisco Intersight cloud portal through a device connector which is embedded in the management controller of the Cisco DCNM platform. The device connector provides a secure way for connected Cisco DCNM to send and receive information from the Cisco Intersight portal, using a secure Internet connection.

NetApp AFF A-Series Storage

NetApp AFF A-Series controller lineup provides industry leading performance while continuing to provide a full suite of enterprise-grade data services for a shared environment across on-premises data centers and the cloud. Powered by NetApp® ONTAP® data management software, NetApp® AFF A-Series systems deliver the industry’s highest performance, superior flexibility, and best-in-class data services and cloud integration to help you accelerate, manage, and protect business-critical data across your hybrid clouds. As the first enterprise-grade storage systems to support both FC-NVMe and NVMe-TCP, AFF A-Series systems boost performance with modern network connectivity. These systems deliver the industry’s lowest latency for an enterprise all-flash array, making them a superior choice for running the most demanding workloads and AI/DL applications. With a simple software upgrade to the modern FC-NVMe or NVMe-TCP SAN infrastructure, you can run more workloads with faster response times, without disruption or data migration.

NetApp offers a wide range of AFF-A series controllers to meet varying demands of the field. The high-end AFF A900 systems have a highly resilient design that enables non-disruptive in-chassis upgrades. It delivers latency as low as 100µs with FC-NVMe technology. The A800 delivers high performance in a compact form factor and is especially suited for EDA and Media & Entertainment workloads. The midrange, most versatile AFF A400 system features hardware acceleration technology that significantly enhances performance and storage efficiency. The entry-level, budget friendly AFF A250, provides 40% more performance and 33% more efficiency at no extra cost compared with its predecessor.

Note:   NetApp AFF A800 and A400 have been chosen for solution validation although any other AFF series could be used instead.

NetApp AFF A400

The NetApp AFF A400 offers full end-to-end NVMe support. The frontend FC-NVMe connectivity makes it possible to achieve optimal performance from an all-flash array for workloads that include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time analytics as well as business-critical databases. The frontend NVMe-TCP connectivity enables customers to take advantage of NVMe technology over existing ethernet infrastructure for faster host connectivity. On the back end, the A400 supports both serial-attached SCSI (SAS) and NVMe-attached SSDs, offering the versatility for current customers to move up from their legacy A-Series systems and satisfying the increasing interest that all customers have in NVMe-based storage.

The NetApp AFF A400 offers greater port availability, network connectivity, and expandability. The NetApp AFF A400 has 10 PCIe Gen3 slots per high availability pair. The NetApp AFF A400 offers 10GbE, 25GbE and 100GbE ports for IP based transport, and  16/32Gb ports for FC and FC-NVMe traffic. This model was created to keep up with changing business needs and performance and workload requirements by merging the latest technology for data acceleration and ultra-low latency in an end-to-end NVMe storage system.

Figure 19.              NetApp AFF A400 Front View

Figure 20.              NetApp AFF A400 Rear View

NetApp AFF A800

The NetApp AFF A800 is a higher end model that offers superior performance and higher port count (both 32G FC and 100G Ethernet) than AFF A400. AFF A800 single chassis HA Pair supports 48 internal SSD drives and up to 8 external NS224 shelves allowing up to 240 NVMe SSD drives. It offers ultra-low latency of 100us and up to 300 GB/s throughput enabling it to be an ultimate choice to power data hungry applications such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, and big data analytics.

Figure 21.              NetApp AFF A800 Front View

Figure 22.              NetApp AFF A800 Rear View

For more information about the NetApp AFF A-series controllers, see the AFF product page: https://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/all-flash-array/aff-a-series.aspx.

You can view or download more technical specifications of the AFF A-series controllers here: https://www.netapp.com/us/media/ds-3582.pdf

Note: Cisco UCS X-Series is supported with all NetApp AFF systems running NetApp ONTAP 9 release.

Note: FlexPod CVD provides reference configurations and there are many more supported IMT configurations that can be used for FlexPod deployments, including NetApp hybrid storage arrays.

NetApp ONTAP 9.11.1

NetApp storage systems harness the power of ONTAP to simplify the data infrastructure from edge, core, and cloud with a common set of data services and 99.9999 percent availability. NetApp ONTAP 9 data management software from NetApp enables customers to modernize their infrastructure and transition to a cloud-ready data center. ONTAP 9 has a host of features to simplify deployment and data management, accelerate and protect critical data, and make infrastructure future-ready across hybrid-cloud architectures.

NetApp ONTAP 9 is the data management software that is used with the NetApp AFF A400 and A800 all-flash storage systems in this solution design. ONTAP software offers secure unified storage for applications that read and write data over block- or file-access protocol storage configurations. These storage configurations range from high-speed flash to lower-priced spinning media or cloud-based object storage. ONTAP implementations can run on NetApp engineered FAS or AFF series arrays and in private, public, or hybrid clouds (NetApp Private Storage and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP). Specialized implementations offer best-in-class converged infrastructure, featured here as part of the FlexPod Datacenter solution or with access to third-party storage arrays (NetApp FlexArray virtualization). Together these implementations form the basic framework of the NetApp Data Fabric, with a common software-defined approach to data management, and fast efficient replication across systems. FlexPod and ONTAP architectures can serve as the foundation for both hybrid cloud and private cloud designs.

Read more about all the capabilities of ONTAP data management software here: https://www.netapp.com/us/products/data-management-software/ontap.aspx.

Note:   ONTAP 9.6.RC1 introduced support for X1148A 2-port 100GbE adapter. ONTAP 9.10.1 introduced support for NVMe over TCP.

For more information on new features and functionality in latest ONTAP software, refer to the ONTAP release notes: ONTAP® 9 Release Notes (netapp.com)

NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager

NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager is a comprehensive monitoring and proactive management tool for NetApp ONTAP systems to help manage the availability, capacity, protection, and performance risks of your storage systems and virtual infrastructure. The Unified Manager can be deployed on a Linux server, on a Windows server, or as a virtual appliance on a VMware host.

Active IQ Unified Manager enables monitoring your ONTAP storage clusters from a single redesigned, intuitive interface that delivers intelligence from community wisdom and AI analytics. It provides comprehensive operational, performance, and proactive insights into the storage environment and the virtual machines running on it. When an issue occurs with the storage infrastructure, Unified Manager can notify you about the details of the issue to help with identifying the root cause. The virtual machine dashboard gives you a view into the performance statistics for the VM so that you can investigate the entire I/O path from the vSphere host down through the network and finally to the storage. Some events also provide remedial actions that can be taken to rectify the issue. You can configure custom alerts for events so that when issues occur, you are notified through email and SNMP Traps. Active IQ Unified Manager enables planning for the storage requirements of your users by forecasting capacity and usage trends to proactively act before issues arise, preventing reactive short-term decisions that can lead to additional problems in the long term.

For more information on NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager, go to: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/active-iq-unified-manager/

NetApp SnapCenter

SnapCenter Software is a simple, centralized, scalable platform that provides application consistent data protection for applications, databases, host file systems, and VMs running on ONTAP systems anywhere on premise or in the Hybrid Cloud.

SnapCenter leverages NetApp Snapshot, SnapRestore, FlexClone, SnapMirror, and SnapVault technologies to provide:

·     Fast, space-efficient, application-consistent, disk-based backups

·     Rapid, granular restore, and application-consistent recovery

·     Quick, space-efficient cloning

SnapCenter includes both SnapCenter Server and individual lightweight plug-ins. You can automate deployment of plug-ins to remote application hosts, schedule backup, verification, and clone operations, and monitor all data protection operations.

Data protection is supported for Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Databases on Linux or AIX, SAP HANA database, and Windows Host Filesystems running on ONTAP systems. It is also supported for other standard or custom applications and databases by providing a framework to create user-defined SnapCenter plug-ins. You may install only the plug-ins that are appropriate for the data that you want to protect.

Note:   For more information on SnapCenter 4.7, refer to the SnapCenter software documentation: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/snapcenter/index.html

ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere

The ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere provides end-to-end life cycle management for virtual machines in VMware environments that use NetApp storage systems. It simplifies storage and data management for VMware environments by enabling administrators to directly manage storage within the vCenter Server.

Note:   Each component in ONTAP tools provides capabilities to help manage your storage more efficiently.

Virtual Storage Console (VSC)

VSC enables you to perform the following tasks:

·    Add storage controllers, assign credentials, and set up permissions for storage controllers of VSC, that both SRA and VASA Provider can leverage

·    Provision datastores

·    Monitor the performance of the datastores and virtual machines in your vCenter Server environment

·    View and update the host settings of the ESXi hosts that are connected to NetApp storage

·    Control administrator access to the vCenter Server objects by using role-based access control (RBAC)

VASA Provider

VASA Provider for ONTAP uses VMware vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) to send information about storage used by VMware vSphere to the vCenter Server. ONTAP tools has VASA Provider integrated with VSC. VASA Provider enables you to perform the following tasks:

·    Provision VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) datastores

·    Create and use storage capability profiles that define different storage service level objectives (SLOs) for your environment

·    Verify for compliance between the datastores and the storage capability profiles

·    Set alarms to warn you when volumes and aggregates are approaching the threshold limits

·    Monitor the performance of virtual machine disks (VMDKs) and the virtual machines that are created on vVols datastores

Storage Replication Adapter (SRA)

SRA enables you to use array-based replication (ABR) for protected sites and recovery sites for disaster recovery in the event of a failure. When SRA is enabled and used in conjunction with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), you can recover the vCenter Server datastores and virtual machines in the event of a failure.

For more information on ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere, go to: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-tools-vmware-vsphere/index.html

VMware vSphere 7.0 U3

VMware vSphere is a virtualization platform for holistically managing large collections of infrastructures (resources including CPUs, storage, and networking) as a seamless, versatile, and dynamic operating environment. Unlike traditional operating systems that manage an individual machine, VMware vSphere aggregates the infrastructure of an entire data center to create a single powerhouse with resources that can be allocated quickly and dynamically to any application in need.

VMware vSphere 7.0 U3 has several improvements and simplifications including, but not limited to:

·    Support for the NVMe-TCP storage protocol with VMFS6 datastores

·    Improvements to vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS), including the ability to designate a datastore to store vCLS virtual machines

·    Improved Maintenance Mode Reliability and Workload Placement

·    Enhanced Performance Statistics for Memory

·    vSphere Lifecycle Management (vLCM) with Hardware Support Manager (HSM) Integration with Cisco Intersight

·    A VMware-Recommended 128GB SAN boot LUN for VMware ESXi

For more information about VMware vSphere and its components, go to: https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere.html.

VMware vSphere vCenter

VMware vCenter Server provides unified management of all hosts and VMs from a single console and aggregates performance monitoring of clusters, hosts, and VMs. VMware vCenter Server gives administrators a deep insight into the status and configuration of compute clusters, hosts, VMs, storage, the guest OS, and other critical components of a virtual infrastructure. VMware vCenter manages the rich set of features available in a VMware vSphere environment.

Cisco Intersight Assist Device Connector for VMware vCenter, NetApp ONTAP, and Cisco Nexus and MDS Switches

Cisco Intersight integrates with VMware vCenter, NetApp storage, and Cisco Nexus switches as follows:

·    Cisco Intersight uses the device connector running within the Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance to communicate with the VMware vCenter.

·    Cisco Intersight uses the device connector running within a Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance to integrate with NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager. The NetApp AFF A800 should be added to NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager.

·    Cisco Intersight uses the device connector running within the Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance to communicate with Cisco Nexus 9000 and MDS switches.

Figure 23.              Cisco Intersight and vCenter/NetApp/Cisco Switch Integration

The device connector provides a secure way for connected targets to send information and receive control instructions from the Cisco Intersight portal using a secure internet connection. The integration brings the full value and simplicity of Cisco Intersight infrastructure management service to VMware hypervisor and ONTAP data storage environments.

Enterprise SAN and NAS workloads can benefit equally from the integrated management solution. The integration architecture enables FlexPod customers to use new management capabilities with no compromise in their existing VMware, ONTAP, or switch operations. IT users will be able to manage heterogeneous infrastructure from a centralized Cisco Intersight portal. At the same time, the IT staff can continue to use VMware vCenter, NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager, and Cisco Switch Interfaces for comprehensive analysis, diagnostics, and reporting of virtual, storage, and switching environments. The functionality provided through this integration is explained in the upcoming solution design section.

Solution Design

This chapter contains the following:

·    Requirements

·    Physical Topology

·    Logical Topology

·    Compute System Connectivity

·    Cisco Nexus Ethernet Connectivity

·    Cisco MDS SAN Connectivity - Fibre Channel Design Only

·    Cisco UCS X-Series Configuration - Cisco Intersight Managed Mode

·    NetApp AFF A400 - Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) Design

·    VMware vSphere - ESXi Design

·    Cisco Intersight Integration with VMware vCenter, Cisco Switches, and NetApp Storage

·    Design Considerations

The FlexPod Datacenter with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet solution delivers a cloud-managed infrastructure solution on the latest Cisco UCS hardware. VMware vSphere 7.0 U3 hypervisor is installed on the Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes configured for stateless compute design using boot from SAN. The NetApp AFF A800 or A400 provides the storage infrastructure required for setting up the VMware environment. The Cisco Intersight cloud-management platform is utilized to configure and manage the infrastructure.

Requirements

The FlexPod Datacenter with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet design meets the following general design requirements:

·    Resilient design across all layers of the infrastructure with no single point of failure

·    Scalable design with the flexibility to add compute capacity, storage, or network bandwidth as needed

·    Modular design that can be replicated to expand and grow as the needs of the business grow

·    Flexible design that can support different models of various components with ease

·    Simplified design with ability to integrate and automate with external automation tools

·    Cloud-enabled design which can be configured, managed, and orchestrated from the cloud using GUI or APIs

Physical Topology

FlexPod Datacenter with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet supports both IP and Fibre Channel (FC)—based storage access design. For the IP-based solution, iSCSI configuration on Cisco UCS and NetApp AFF A800 is utilized to set up boot from SAN for the Compute Node. For the FC designs, NetApp AFF A800 and Cisco UCS X-Series are connected through Cisco MDS 9132T Fibre Channel Switches and boot from SAN uses the FC network. In both these designs, VMware ESXi hosts access the VM datastore volumes on NetApp using NFS. The physical connectivity details for both IP and FC designs are explained below.

IP-based Storage Access: iSCSI, NFS, and NVMe-TCP

The physical topology for the IP-based FlexPod Datacenter is shown in Figure 24.

Figure 24.              FlexPod Datacenter Physical Topology for iSCSI, NFS, and NVMe-TCP

To validate the IP-based storage access in a FlexPod configuration, the components are set up as follows:

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects provide the chassis and network connectivity.

·    The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis connects to fabric interconnects using Cisco UCS 9108-100G intelligent fabric modules (IFMs), where four 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports are used on each IFM to connect to the appropriate FI. If additional bandwidth is required, all eight 100G ports can be utilized.

·    Cisco UCSX-210c M6 Compute Nodes contain fifth-generation Cisco 15231 virtual interface cards (VICs).

·    Cisco UCS C225 or C245 Servers (and C220 or C240) with either fourth-generation VICs or fifth-generation 15428 VICs connect to the fabric interconnects with either 100GE or 25GE (utilizing breakouts).

·    The Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis with Cisco UCS B-Series servers can also be connected with 4x25G or 4x10G breakout cables.

·    Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in Cisco NX-OS mode provide the switching fabric.

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect 100-Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports connect to Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in a Virtual Port Channel (vPC) configuration.

·    The NetApp AFF A800 controllers connect to the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches using two 100 GE ports from each controller configured as a vPC.

·    VMware 7.0 U3 ESXi software is installed on Cisco UCSX-210c M6 Compute Nodes to validate the infrastructure.

FC-based Storage Access: FC, FC-NVMe, and NFS

The physical topology for the FC-booted FlexPod Datacenter is shown in Figure 25.

Figure 25.              FlexPod Datacenter Physical Topology for FC, FC-NVMe, and NFS

To validate the FC-based storage access in a FlexPod configuration, the components are set up as follows:

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects provide the chassis and network connectivity.

·    The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis connects to fabric interconnects using Cisco UCSX 9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs), where four 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports are used on each IFM to connect to the appropriate FI.

·    Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes contain fifth-generation Cisco 15231 VICs.

·    Cisco UCS C225 or C245 Servers (and C220 or C240) with either fourth-generation VICs or fifth-generation 15428 VICs connect to the fabric interconnects with either 100GE or 25GE (utilizing breakouts).

·    The Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis with Cisco UCS B-Series servers can also be connected with 4x25G or 4x10G breakout cables.

·    Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in Cisco NX-OS mode provide the switching fabric.

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect 100 Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports connect to Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in a vPC configuration.

·    The NetApp AFF A800 controller connects to the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches using two 100 GE ports from each controller configured as a vPC for NFS traffic.

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects are connected to the Cisco MDS 9132T switches using multiple 32-Gbps Fibre Channel connections (utilizing breakouts) configured as a single port channel for SAN connectivity.

·    The NetApp AFF controllers connect to the Cisco MDS 9132T switches using 32-Gbps Fibre Channel connections for SAN connectivity.

·    VMware 7.0 U3 ESXi software is installed on Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes to validate the infra-structure.

FC-based Storage Access: FC, FC-NVMe, and NFS Utilizing Nexus SAN Switching

The physical topology for the FC-boot FlexPod Datacenter with Nexus SAN Switching is shown in Figure 26.

Figure 26.              FlexPod Datacenter Physical Topology for FC, FC-NVMe, and NFS Utilizing Nexus SAN Switching

To validate the FC-based storage access in a FlexPod configuration with Nexus SAN switching, the components are set up as follows:

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects provide the chassis and network connectivity.

·    The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis connects to fabric interconnects using Cisco UCSX 9108-100G Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs), where four 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports are used on each IFM to connect to the appropriate FI.

·    Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes contain fifth-generation Cisco 15231 VICs.

·    Cisco UCS C225 or C245 Servers (and C220 or C240) with either fourth-generation VICs or fifth-generation 15428 VICs connect to the fabric interconnects with either 100GE or 25GE (utilizing breakouts).

·    The Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis with Cisco UCS B-Series servers can also be connected with 4x25G or 4x10G breakout cables.

·    Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in Cisco NX-OS mode provide both the switching fabric and the SAN fabric.

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect 100 Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports connect to Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 Switches in a vPC configuration.

·    The NetApp AFF A800 controller connects to the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switches using two 100 GE ports from each controller configured as a vPC for NFS traffic.

·    Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects are connected to the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switches using multiple 100-Gbps FCoE uplinks configured as a single Ethernet port channel.

·    The NetApp AFF controllers connect to the Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switches using 32-Gbps Fibre Channel connections for SAN connectivity.

·    VMware 7.0 U3 ESXi software is installed on Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes to validate the infra-structure.

VLAN Configuration

Table 1 lists VLANs configured for setting up the FlexPod environment along with their usage.

Table 1.     VLAN Usage

VLAN ID

Name

Usage

2

Native-VLAN

Use VLAN 2 as native VLAN instead of default VLAN (1)

1020

OOB-MGMT-VLAN

Out-of-band management VLAN to connect management ports for various devices

1021

IB-MGMT-VLAN

In-band management VLAN utilized for all in-band management connectivity - for example, ESXi hosts, VM management, etc.

1022

VM-Traffic

VM data traffic VLAN

3050

NFS-VLAN

NFS VLAN for mounting datastores in ESXi servers for VMs

3010*

iSCSI-A

iSCSI-A path for boot-from-san traffic

3020*

iSCSI-B

iSCSI-B path for boot-from-san traffic

3030*

NVMe-TCP-A

NVMe-TCP-A path for NVMe datastores

3040*

NVMe-TCP-B

NVMe-TCP-B path for NVMe datastores

3000

vMotion

VMware vMotion traffic

* iSCSI and NVMe-TCP VLANs are not required if using FC storage access.

Some of the key highlights of VLAN usage are as follows:

·    VLAN 1020 allows customers to manage and access out-of-band management interfaces of various devices and is brought into the infrastructure to allow CIMC access to the Cisco UCS servers and is also available to infrastructure virtual machines (VMs). Interfaces in this VLAN are configured with MTU 1500.

·    VLAN 1021 is used for in-band management of VMs, ESXi hosts, and other infrastructure services. Interfaces in this VLAN are configured with MTU 1500.

·    VLAN 3050 provides ESXi hosts access to the NFS datastores hosted on the NetApp Controllers for deploying VMs. Interfaces in this VLAN are configured with MTU 9000.

·    A pair of iSCSI VLANs (3010 and 3020) is configured to provide access to boot LUNs for ESXi hosts and iSCSI datastores. These VLANs are not needed when configuring Fibre Channel connectivity. Interfaces in these VLANs are configured with MTU 9000.

·    A pair of NVMe-TCP VLANs (3030 and 3040) is configured to provide access to NVMe datastores. These VLANs are not needed when configuring Fibre Channel connectivity. Interfaces in these VLANs are configured with MTU 9000.

Logical Topology

In FlexPod Datacenter deployments, each Cisco UCS server equipped with a Cisco Virtual Interface Card (VIC) is configured for multiple virtual Network Interfaces (vNICs), which appear as standards-compliant PCIe endpoints to the OS. The end-to-end logical connectivity including VLAN/VSAN usage between the server profile for an ESXi host and the storage configuration on NetApp AFF A800 controllers is described below.

Logical Topology for IP-based Storage Access

Figure 27 illustrates the end-to-end connectivity design for IP-based storage access.

Figure 27.              Logical End-to-End Connectivity for iSCSI Design

Each ESXi server profile supports:

·    Managing the ESXi hosts using a common management segment

·    Diskless SAN boot using iSCSI with persistent operating system installation for true stateless computing

·    Six vNICs where:

°   Two redundant vNICs (vSwitch0-A and vSwitch0-B) carry management and infrastructure NFS traffic. The MTU value for these vNICs is set as a Jumbo MTU (9000), but management interfaces with MTU 1500 can be placed on these vNICs.

°   Two redundant vNICs (vDS0-A and vDS0-B) are used by the first vSphere Distributed switch (vDS) and carry VMware vMotion traffic and customer application data traffic. The MTU for the vNICs is set to Jumbo MTU (9000), but interfaces that require MTU 1500 can be placed on these vNICs.

°   Two vNICs (iSCSi/NVMe-TCP-A and iSCSi/NVMe-TCP-B) are used by the iSCSI-NVMe-TCP vDS. The iSCSI VLANs are set as native on the corresponding vNICs, and the NVMe-TCP VLANs are set as tagged VLANs on the corresponding vNICs. The MTU value for the vNICs and all interfaces on the vDS is set to Jumbo MTU (9000). The initial VMware ESXi setup utilizes two vSwitches, but the vNICs and VMkernel ports are migrated to the second vDS.

·    Each ESXi host (compute node) mounts VM datastores from NetApp AFF A800 controllers using NFS for deploying virtual machines.

Logical Topology for FC-based Storage Access

Figure 28 illustrates the end-to-end connectivity design for FC-based storage access.

Figure 28.              Logical End-to-End Connectivity for FC Design

Each ESXi server profile supports:

·    Managing the ESXi hosts using a common management segment

·    Diskless SAN boot using FC with persistent operating system installation for true stateless computing

·    Four vNICs where:

°   Two redundant vNICs (vSwitch0-A and vSwitch0-B) carry management and Infrastructure NFS VLANs. The MTU value for these vNICs is set as a Jumbo MTU (9000), but management interfaces with MTU 1500 can be placed on these vNICs.

°   Two redundant vNICs (vDS0-A and vDS0-B) are used by vDS0 and carry VMware vMotion traffic and customer application data traffic. The MTU for the vNICs is set to Jumbo MTU (9000), but interfaces that require MTU 1500 can be placed on these vNICs.

°   Two vHBAs (one for FC and one for FC-NVMe) defined on Fabric A to provide access to SAN-A path.

°   Two vHBAs (one for FC and one for FC-NVMe) defined on Fabric B to provide access to SAN-B path.

·    Each ESXi host (compute node) mounts VM datastores from NetApp AFF A800 controllers using NFS for deploying virtual machines.

Compute System Connectivity

The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis is equipped with the Cisco UCS 9108-100G intelligent fabric modules (IFMs). The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis connects to each Cisco UCS 6536 FI using four 100GE ports, as shown in Figure 29. If the customers require more bandwidth, all eight ports on the IFMs can be connected to each FI.

Figure 29.              Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis Connectivity to Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects

Cisco Nexus Ethernet Connectivity

The Cisco Nexus 93180YC-FX3 device configuration explains the core networking requirements for Layer 2 and Layer 3 communication. Some of the key NX-OS features implemented within the design are:

·    Feature interface-vans—Allows for VLAN IP interfaces to be configured within the switch as gateways.

·    Feature HSRP—Allows for Hot Standby Routing Protocol configuration for high availability.

·    Feature LACP—Allows for the utilization of Link Aggregation Control Protocol (802.3ad) by the port channels configured on the switch.

·    Feature VPC—Virtual Port-Channel (vPC) presents the two Nexus switches as a single “logical” port channel to the connecting upstream or downstream device.

·    Feature LLDP—Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), a vendor-neutral device discovery protocol, allows the discovery of both Cisco devices and devices from other sources.

·    Feature NX-API—NX-API improves the accessibility of CLI by making it available outside of the switch by using HTTP/HTTPS. This feature helps with configuring the Cisco Nexus switch remotely using the automation framework.

·    Feature UDLD—Enables unidirectional link detection for various interfaces.

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect 6536 Ethernet Connectivity

Cisco UCS 6536 FIs are connected with port channels to Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switches using 100GE connections configured as virtual port channels. Each FI is connected to both Cisco Nexus switches using a 100G connection; additional links can easily be added to the port channel to increase the bandwidth as needed. Figure 30 illustrates the physical connectivity details.

Figure 30.              Cisco UCS 6536 FI Ethernet Connectivity

NetApp AFF A800 Ethernet Connectivity

NetApp AFF A800 controllers are connected with port channels (NetApp Interface Groups) to Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2 switches using 100GE connections configured as virtual port channels. The storage controllers are deployed in a switchless cluster interconnect configuration and are connected to each other using the 100GE ports e0a and e1a. Figure 31 illustrates the physical connectivity details.

In Figure 31, the two storage controllers in the high-availability pair are drawn separately for clarity. Physically, the two controllers exist within a single chassis.

Figure 31.              NetApp AFF A800 Ethernet Connectivity

Cisco MDS SAN Connectivity – Fibre Channel Design Only

The Cisco MDS 9132T is the key design component bringing together the 32Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) capabilities to the FlexPod design. A redundant 32 Gbps Fibre Channel SAN configuration is deployed utilizing two MDS 9132Ts switches. Some of the key MDS features implemented within the design are:

·    Feature NPIV—N port identifier virtualization (NPIV) provides a means to assign multiple FC IDs to a single N port.

·    Feature fport-channel-trunk—F-port-channel-trunks allow for the fabric logins from the NPV switch to be virtualized over the port channel. This provides nondisruptive redundancy should individual member links fail.

·    Enhanced Device Alias – a feature that allows device aliases (a name for a WWPN) to be used in zones instead of WWPNs, making zones more readable. Also, if a WWPN for a vHBA or NetApp FC LIF changes, the device alias can be changed, and this change will carry over into all zones that use the device alias instead of changing WWPNs in all zones.

·    Smart-Zoning—a feature that reduces the number of TCAM entries and administrative overhead by identifying the initiators and targets in the environment.

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect 6536 SAN Connectivity

For SAN connectivity, each Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect is connected to a Cisco MDS 9132T SAN switch using at least one breakout on ports 33-36 to a 4 x 32G Fibre Channel port-channel connection, as shown in Figure 32.

Figure 32.              Cisco UCS 6536 FI SAN Connectivity

NetApp AFF A800 SAN Connectivity

For SAN connectivity, each NetApp AFF A800 controller is connected to both of Cisco MDS 9132T SAN switches using 32G Fibre Channel connections, as shown in Figure 33. FC-NVMe LIFs can be put on the same FC ports on the NetApp storage controllers as FC LIFs.

In Figure 33, the two storage controllers in the high-availability pair are drawn separately for clarity. Physically, the two controllers exist within a single chassis.

Figure 33.              NetApp AFF A800 SAN Connectivity

Cisco UCS Configuration – Cisco Intersight Managed Mode

Cisco Intersight Managed Mode standardizes policy and operation management for Cisco UCS X-Series and the remaining UCS hardware used in this CVD. The Cisco UCS compute nodes are configured using server profiles defined in Cisco Intersight. These server profiles derive all the server characteristics from various policies and templates. At a high level, configuring Cisco UCS using Intersight Managed Mode consists of the steps shown in Figure 34.

Figure 34.              Configuration Steps for Cisco Intersight Managed Mode

Set up Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect for Cisco Intersight Managed Mode

During the initial configuration, for the management mode the configuration wizard enables customers to choose whether to manage the fabric interconnect through Cisco UCS Manager or the Cisco Intersight platform. Customers can switch the management mode for the fabric interconnects between Cisco Intersight and Cisco UCS Manager at any time; however, Cisco UCS FIs must be set up in Intersight Managed Mode (IMM) for configuring the Cisco UCS X-Series system and the Cisco UCS 6536 fabric interconnects. Figure 35 shows the dialog during initial configuration of Cisco UCS FIs for setting up IMM.

Figure 35.              Fabric Interconnect Setup for Cisco Intersight Managed Mode

Claim a Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect in the Cisco Intersight Platform

After setting up the Cisco UCS fabric interconnect for Cisco Intersight Managed Mode, FIs can be claimed to a new or an existing Cisco Intersight account. When a Cisco UCS fabric interconnect is successfully added to the Cisco Intersight platform, all future configuration steps are completed in the Cisco Intersight portal.

Figure 36.              Cisco Intersight: Fabric Interconnects

Customers can verify whether a Cisco UCS fabric interconnect is in Cisco UCS Manager managed mode or Cisco Intersight Managed Mode by clicking on the fabric interconnect name and looking at the detailed in-formation screen for the FI, as shown in Figure 37.

Figure 37.              Cisco UCS FI in Intersight Managed Mode

Cisco UCS Chassis Profile (Optional)

A Cisco UCS Chassis profile configures and associate chassis policy to an IMM claimed chassis. The chassis profile feature is available in Intersight only if customers have installed the Intersight Essentials License. The chassis-related policies can be attached to the profile either at the time of creation or later.

The chassis profile in a FlexPod is used to set the power policy for the chassis. By default, UCSX power supplies are configured in GRID mode, but the power policy can be utilized to set the power supplies in non-redundant or N+1/N+2 redundant modes.

Cisco UCS Domain Profile

A Cisco UCS domain profile configures a fabric interconnect pair through reusable policies, allows configuration of the ports and port channels, and configures the VLANs and VSANs to be used in the network. It defines the characteristics of and configures the ports on the fabric interconnects. One Cisco UCS domain profile can be assigned to one fabric interconnect domain, and the Cisco Intersight platform supports the attachment of one port policy per Cisco UCS domain profile.

Some of the characteristics of the Cisco UCS domain profile in the FlexPod environment are:

·    A single domain profile is created for the pair of Cisco UCS fabric interconnects.

·    Unique port policies are defined for the two fabric interconnects.

·    The VLAN configuration policy is common to the fabric interconnect pair because both fabric interconnects are configured for the same set of VLANs.

·    The VSAN configuration policies (FC connectivity option) are unique for the two fabric interconnects because the VSANs are unique.

·    The Network Time Protocol (NTP), network connectivity, Link Control (UDLD), and system Quality-of-Service (QoS) policies are common to the fabric interconnect pair.

After the Cisco UCS domain profile has been successfully created and deployed, the policies including the port policies are pushed to the Cisco UCS fabric interconnects. The Cisco UCS domain profile can easily be cloned to install additional Cisco UCS systems. When cloning the UCS domain profile, the new UCS domains utilize the existing policies for consistent deployment of additional Cisco UCS systems at scale.

Figure 38.              Cisco UCS Domain Profile

The Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis and Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes are automatically discovered when the ports are successfully configured using the domain profile as shown in Figure 39, Figure 40, and Figure 41.

Figure 39.              Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis Front View

Figure 40.              Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis Rear View

Figure 41.              Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Nodes

Server Profile Template

A server profile template enables resource management by simplifying policy alignment and server configuration. A server profile template is created using the server profile template wizard. The server profile template wizard groups the server policies into the following four categories to provide a quick summary view of the policies that are attached to a profile:

·    Compute policies: BIOS, boot order, and virtual media policies, and UUID pool

·    Network policies: adapter configuration, LAN connectivity, and SAN connectivity policies

°   The LAN connectivity policy requires you to create Ethernet network policy, Ethernet adapter policy, and Ethernet QoS policy.

°   The SAN connectivity policy requires you to create Fibre Channel (FC) network policy, Fibre Channel adapter policy, and Fibre Channel QoS policy. SAN connectivity policy is only required for the FC connectivity option.

·    Storage policies: not used in FlexPod

·    Management policies: device connector, Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) over LAN, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), local user, network connectivity, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), Secure Shell (SSH), Serial over LAN (SOL), syslog, and virtual Keyboard, Video, and Mouse (KVM) policies

Some of the characteristics of the server profile template for FlexPod are as follows:

·    BIOS policy is created to specify various server parameters in accordance with FlexPod best practices and Cisco UCS Performance Tuning Guides.

·    Boot order policy defines virtual media (KVM mapped DVD), all SAN paths for NetApp iSCSI or Fibre Channel logical interfaces (LIFs), and a CIMC mapped DVD for OS installation.

·    IMC access policy defines the management IP address pool for KVM access.

·    Local user policy is used to enable KVM-based user access.

·    For the iSCSI boot from SAN configuration, LAN connectivity policy is used to create six virtual network interface cards (vNICs); two for management virtual switch (vSwitch0), two for application Virtual Distributed Switch (vDS0), and two for the iSCSI-NVMe-TCP vDS. Various policies and pools are also created for the vNIC configuration.

·    For the FC boot from SAN configuration, LAN connectivity policy is used to create four virtual network interface cards (vNICs); two for management virtual switches (vSwitch0) and two for application Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS); along with various policies and pools.

·    For the FC connectivity option, the SAN connectivity policy is used to create four virtual host bus adapters (vHBAs); two each (FC and FC-NVMe) for SAN A and for SAN B; along with various policies and pools. The SAN connectivity policy is not required for iSCSI setup.

Figure 42 shows various policies associated with the server profile template.

Figure 42.              Server Profile Template for iSCSI Boot from SAN

Derive and Deploy Server Profiles from the Cisco Intersight Server Profile Template

The Cisco Intersight server profile allows server configurations to be deployed directly on the compute nodes based on polices defined in the server profile template. After a server profile template has been successfully created, server profiles can be derived from the template and associated with the Cisco UCS Compute Nodes, as shown in Figure 43.

Figure 43.              Deriving a Server Profile from Templates

On successful deployment of the server profile, the Cisco UCS Compute Nodes are configured with parameters defined in the server profile and can boot from the storage LUN hosted on NetApp AFF A800.

Cisco UCS Ethernet Adapter Policies

One point of optimization with Cisco UCS in FlexPod is use of Cisco UCS Ethernet Adapter policies to optimize network traffic into multiple receive (RX) queues and maximize the use of multiple CPU cores in servicing these queues resulting in higher network throughput on up to 100Gbps interfaces. IMM (and UCSM) adapter policies allow the number of transmit (TX) and RX queues and the queue ring size (buffer size) to be adjusted, and features such as Receive Side Scaling (RSS) to be enabled. RSS allows multiple RX queues to each be assigned to a different CPU core, allowing parallel processing of incoming Ethernet traffic. VMware ESXi 7.0 U3 supports RSS, a single TX queue, and up to 16 RX queues. This CVD introduces the fifth-generation Cisco VICs which support a ring size up to 16K (16,384), where the previous fourth-generation VICs support a ring size up to 4K (4096). Increasing the ring size can result in increased latency, but with the higher speed 100Gbps interfaces used in this CVD, the data moves through the buffers in less time, minimizing the latency increase. In this CVD, up to four Ethernet Adapter policies are defined:

Policy Name

TX Queues

TX Ring Size

RX Queues

RX Ring Size

RSS

VMware-Default

1

256

1

512

Disabled

VMware-High Traffic

1

4096

8

4096

Enabled

VMware-4G-16RXQs

1

4096

16

4096

Enabled

VMware-5G-16RXQs

1

16384

16

16384

Enabled

Figure 44 shows part of the VMware-5G-16RXQs Ethernet Adapter policy in Cisco Intersight. Notice that not only the fields in the above table have been modified, but also Completion Queue Count (TX Queues + RX Queues) and Interrupts (Completion Queue Count + 2) have also been modified. For more information on configuring Ethernet Adapter polices, go to: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/interfaces-modules/unified-computing-system-adapters/white-paper-c11-744754.html.

Figure 44.              VMware-5G-16Rx Ethernet Adapter Policy

NetApp AFF – Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) Design

To provide the necessary data segregation and management, a dedicated SVM (Infra-SVM) is created for hosting the VMware environment. The SVM contains the following volumes and logical interfaces (LIFs):

·    Volumes

°   ESXi boot volume (esxi_boot) that consists of ESXi boot LUNs, used to enable ESXi host boot using iSCSI or FC boot from SAN. The boot LUNs are 128GB in size and thin provisioned as per VMware recommendation.

°   Infrastructure datastores used by the vSphere environment to store the VMs and swap files. Separate datastores to be configured for NFS volume and NVMe namespace. The datastore configured for NVMe may be used for NVMe-TCP or FC-NVMe.

°   Datastore used by the vSphere environment to host vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VMs. By default, the datastore placement logic chooses an available datastore hence it is recommended to create a dedicated datastore for vCLS VMs.

Note:   It is a NetApp best practice to create Load sharing mirror for each SVM root volume that serves NAS data in the cluster. For more information on LSM, go to: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap/data-protection/manage-snapmirror-root-volume-replication-concept.html

·    Logical interfaces (LIFs)

°   NFS LIFs to mount NFS datastores in the vSphere environment

°   NVMe-TCP LIFs to connect to NVMe namespace from VMs using NVMe over TCP

°   iSCSI A/B LIFs or FC LIFs to connect to ESXi boot LUNs or application data using iSCSI and FC Protocol respectively

°   FC-NVMe LIFs for VMs to connect to NVMe datastores using NVMe over FC traffic

Each LIF belongs to specific VLANs or VSANs assigned for that traffic, as described earlier in this document. For IP based LIFs, IP addresses are assigned from subnets assigned to the respective VLAN. The IP based LIFs configured for SAN storage (iSCSI, FC-NVMe, NVMe-TCP) require 2 IP addresses per controller to allow all 4 paths between the end host and storage. LIFs configured for NFS requires one IP address per controller.

A visual representation of volumes and logical interfaces (LIFs) are shown in Figure 45 and Figure 46, for iSCSI and FC boot, respectively.

Figure 45.              NetApp AFF A800 - Infra-SVM for iSCSI Boot

Figure 46.              NetApp AFF A800 – Infra-SVM for FC Boot

VMware vSphere - ESXi Design

Multiple vNICs (and vHBAs) are created for the ESXi hosts using the Cisco Intersight server profile and are then assigned to specific virtual and distributed switches. The vNIC and (optional) vHBA distribution for the ESXi hosts is as follows:

·    Two vNICs (one on each fabric) for vSwitch0 to support core services such as management and NFS traffic. The standard VMware-Default Cisco UCS Ethernet adapter policy is assigned to these vNICs.

·    Two vNICs (one on each fabric) for vSphere Virtual Distributed Switch (vDS0) to support customer data traffic and vMotion traffic. In this vDS, vMotion is pinned to UCS Fabric B so that vMotion is switched in the B-side fabric interconnect. The higher performance VMware-HighTraffic Cisco UCS Ethernet adapter policy utilizing receive side scaling (RSS) is assigned to these vNICs. If higher performance for infrastructure NFS is desired, the NFS VMkernel ports can be migrated to this vDS, provided the NFS VLAN is configured in the Ethernet network group policy for the vNICs on this vDS.

·    Two vNICs (one on each fabric) for the iSCSI-NVMe-TCP vSphere Virtual Distributed Switch (iSCSI-NVMe-TCP-vDS) to support iSCSI (including boot) and NVMe-TCP traffic. In this vDS, both the iSCSI and NVMe-TCP VMkernel ports are pinned to the appropriate fabric. A maximum performance VMware-5G-16RXQs or VMware-4G-16RXQs Cisco UCS Ethernet adapter policy, utilizing receive side scaling (RSS) and maximum buffer size is assigned to these vNICs.

Note:   Typically, you will either have iSCSI vNICs or the FC vHBAs configured for stateless boot from SAN of the ESXi servers.

Figure 47 and Figure 48 show the ESXi vNIC configurations in detail.

Figure 47.              VMware vSphere - ESXi Host Networking for iSCSI Boot from SAN

Figure 48.              VMware vSphere - ESXi Host Networking for FC Boot from SAN

Cisco Intersight Integration with VMware vCenter, NetApp Storage, and Cisco Switches

Cisco Intersight works with NetApp’s ONTAP storage and VMware vCenter using third-party device connectors, and Cisco Nexus and MDS switches using a Cisco device connector. Since third-party infrastructure does not contain any built-in Intersight device connector, Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance enables Cisco Intersight to communicate with both non-Cisco devices and supported Cisco switches.

Note:   A single Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance can support NetApp ONTAP storage, VMware vCenter, and Cisco switches.

Cisco Intersight integration with VMware vCenter, NetApp ONTAP, and Cisco switches enables customers to perform the following tasks right from the Intersight dashboard:

·    Monitor the virtualization, storage, and switching environment.

·    Add various dashboard widgets to obtain useful at-a-glance information.

·    Perform common Virtual Machine tasks such as power on/off, remote console etc.

·    Orchestrate virtual, storage, and switching, environment to perform common configuration tasks.

The following sections explain the details of these operations. Since Cisco Intersight is a SaaS platform, the monitoring and orchestration capabilities are constantly being added and delivered seamlessly from the cloud.

Figure 49.              Managing NetApp and VMware vCenter through Cisco Intersight using Intersight Assist

Licensing Requirement

To integrate and view various NetApp storage, VMware vCenter, and Cisco switch parameters from Cisco Intersight, a Cisco Intersight Advantage license is required. To use Cisco Intersight orchestration and workflows to provision the storage and virtual environments, an Intersight Premier license is required.

Integrate Cisco Intersight with NetApp ONTAP Storage

To integrate NetApp AFF A800 with Cisco Intersight, you need to deploy and configure:

·    Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance

·    NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager virtual appliance

Using the Cisco Intersight Assist, NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager (AIQUM) is claimed as a target in Cisco Intersight. Once NetApp AIQUM is claimed, the NetApp storage clusters configured in AIQUM will appear in Intersight and can be monitored and orchestrated.

Obtain Storage-level Information

After successfully claiming the NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager as a target, customers can view storage-level information in Cisco Intersight if they have already added NetApp AFF A800 to the NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager.

Figure 50.              NetApp AFF A800 Information in Cisco Intersight

Integrate Cisco Intersight with VMware vCenter, Cisco Nexus Switches, and Cisco MDS Switches

To integrate VMware vCenter and supported Cisco switches with Cisco Intersight, you need use the deployed Cisco Intersight Assist virtual appliance. Using the Cisco Intersight Assist, VMware vCenter and supported Cisco switches are claimed as targets in Cisco Intersight.

Obtain VMware vCenter and Cisco Switch Information

After successfully claiming the VMware vCenter and supported Cisco switches as targets, you can view information on these products in Cisco Intersight.

Figure 51.              VMware vCenter Information in Cisco Intersight

Figure 52.              Cisco Nexus Information in Cisco Intersight

Figure 53.              Cisco MDS Information in Cisco Intersight

FlexPod XCS

FlexPod XCS is the first Cisco Intersight Integrated System that groups the FlexPod components (Cisco UCS, NetApp ONTAP storage, Cisco Nexus and MDS (future) switches, and VMware vCenter) into an Integrated System. This grouping enhances full-stack visibility and provides FlexPod-level dashboards and widgets within the stack. For current information on FlexPod XCS, go to https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-x-series-modular-system/flexpod-xcs-solution-with-intersight-wp.html.

Figure 54.              FlexPod XCS in Cisco Intersight

Design Considerations

Some of the key design considerations for the FlexPod Datacenter with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet are explained in this section.

Management Design Considerations

Out-of-band Management Network

The management interface of every physical device in FlexPod is connected to a dedicated out-of-band management switch which can be part of the existing management infrastructure in a customer’s environment. The out-of-band management network provides management access to all the devices in the FlexPod environment for initial and on-going configuration changes. The routing and switching configuration for this network is independent of FlexPod deployment and therefore changes in FlexPod configurations do not impact management access to the devices. In this CVD, the out-of-band management network is connected to the Cisco Nexus uplinks to allow Cisco UCS CIMC connectivity and to provide the out-of-band management network to management virtual machines (Cisco DCNM) when necessary.

In-band Management Network

The in-band management VLAN configuration is part of FlexPod design. The in-band VLAN is configured on Nexus switches and Cisco UCS within the FlexPod solution to provide management connectivity for vCenter, ESXi and other management components. The changes to FlexPod configuration can impact the in-band management network and misconfigurations can cause loss of access to the management components hosted by FlexPod. It is also required that the out-of-band management network have Layer 3 access to the in-band management network so that management virtual machines with only in-band management interfaces can manage FlexPod hardware devices.

vCenter Deployment Consideration

While hosting the vCenter on the same ESXi hosts that the vCenter is managing is supported, it is a best practice to deploy the vCenter on a separate management infrastructure. Similarly, the ESXi hosts in this new FlexPod with end-to-end 100Gbps Ethernet environment can also be added to an existing customer vCenter. The in-band management VLAN will provide connectivity between the vCenter and the ESXi hosts deployed in the new FlexPod environment. In this CVD Deployment Guide, the steps for installing vCenter on FlexPod environment are included, but the vCenter can also be installed in another environment with L3 reachability to the ESXi hosts in the FlexPod.

Jumbo Frames

An MTU of 9216 is configured at all network levels to allow jumbo frames as needed by the guest OS and application layer. This allows the network at every point to negotiate an MTU up to 9000 with the end point. For VLANs that leave the FlexPod via the Nexus switch uplinks (OOB-MGMT, IB-MGMT, VM-Traffic), all endpoints should have MTU 1500. For Storage and vMotion VLANs that stay within the FlexPod, MTU 9000 should be used on all endpoints for higher performance. It is important that all endpoints within a VLAN have the same MTU setting. It is important to remember that most virtual machine network interfaces have MTU 1500 set by default and that it may be difficult to change this setting to 9000, especially on a large number of virtual machines. This difficulty should be considered when implementing storage protocols such as CIFS or SMB. Note that a VLAN tagged trunk can contain both VLANs with MTU 1500 and VLANs with MTU 9000 interfaces.

NTP

For many reasons, including authentication and log correlation, it is critical within a FlexPod environment that all components are properly synchronized to a time-of-day clock. In order to support this synchronization, all components of FlexPod support network time protocol (NTP). In the FlexPod setup, the two Cisco Nexus switches are synchronized via NTP to at least two external NTP sources. Cisco Nexus NTP distribution is then set up and all the other components of the FlexPod can use the IP of any of the switches’ L3 interfaces, including mgmt0 as an NTP source. If a customer already has NTP distribution in place, that can used instead of Cisco Nexus switch NTP distribution.

Boot From SAN

When utilizing Cisco UCS Server technology with shared storage, it is recommended to configure boot from SAN and store the boot partitions on remote storage. This enables architects and administrators to take full advantage of the stateless nature of Cisco UCS Server Profiles for hardware flexibility across the server hardware and overall portability of server identity. Boot from SAN also removes the need to populate local server storage thereby reducing cost and administrative overhead.

UEFI Secure Boot

This validation of FlexPod uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Secure Boot. UEFI is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. With UEFI secure boot enabled, all executables, such as boot loaders and adapter drivers, are authenticated as properly signed by the BIOS before they can be loaded. Additionally, a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is also installed in the Cisco UCS compute nodes. VMware ESXi 7.0 U3 supports UEFI Secure Boot and VMware vCenter 7.0 U3 supports UEFI Secure Boot Attestation between the TPM module and ESXi, validating that UEFI Secure Boot has properly taken place.

VMware Virtual Volumes

This validation of FlexPod supports VMware Virtual Volumes (vVols) for customers looking for more granular control of their SAN environment. SAN storage systems using Fibre Channel and iSCSI lack the ability to manage individual VM files and disks from the storage system. This makes it difficult for the storage system to directly manage individual VM storage performance, cloning, and protection. vVols bring storage granularity to the SAN environment. NetApp VASA Provider enables customers to create and manage vVols. A vVols datastore consists of one or more FlexVol volumes within a storage container (also called "backing storage"). All the FlexVol volumes within the storage container must use the same protocol (NFS, iSCSI, or FCP) and the same SVMs. A virtual machine can be spread across one vVols datastore or multiple vVols datastores.

NVMe over Fibre Channel

This validation of FlexPod supports NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) to provide the high-performance and low-latency benefits of NVMe across fabrics connecting servers and storage. FC-NVMe is implemented through the Fibre Channel over NVMe (FC-NVMe) standard which is designed to enable NVMe based message commands to transfer data and status information between a host computer and a target storage subsystem over a Fibre Channel network fabric. FC-NVMe simplifies the NVMe command sets into basic FCP instructions.

FC-NVMe requires the creation of additional Fibre Channel interfaces on Cisco UCS Compute nodes and NetApp controllers. Appropriate zoning configurations are also required on Cisco MDS switches.

NVMe over TCP

This validation of FlexPod supports NVMe over TCP (NVMe-TCP) that provides excellent performance scalability for large scale deployments and longer distances. NVMe-TCP has almost all the benefits of FC-NVMe while radically simplifying the networking requirements, including operating over routed networks. The NVMe-TCP targets are connected to the network through a standard TCP infrastructure using Ethernet switches and host-side adapters. NVMe-TCP target is supported beginning with ONTAP 9.10.1 release.

NVMe-TCP requires configuration of 2 additional LIFs per controller. Similarly, 2 additional VMkernel ports are required on the ESXi hosts.

Deployment Hardware and Software

This chapter contains the following subject:

·    Hardware and Software Revisions

Hardware and Software Revisions

Table 2 lists the hardware and software used in this solution

Table 2.     Hardware and Software Revisions

Component

Software

Network

Cisco Nexus 93360YC-FX2

10.2(3)F

Cisco MDS 9132T

9.2(2)

Compute

Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect 6536 and UCS 9108-100G IFM

4.2(2c)

Cisco UCS X210C

5.0(2d)

Cisco UCS C225/245

4.2(2f)

VMware ESXi

7.0 U3d

Cisco VIC ENIC Driver for ESXi

1.0.42.0

Cisco VIC FNIC Driver for ESXi

5.0.0.34

VMware vCenter Appliance

7.0 U3h or latest

Cisco Intersight Assist Virtual Appliance

1.0.9-342 (automatically upgrades to current release)

Storage

NetApp AFF A400/ A800

ONTAP 9.11.1

NetApp ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere

9.11

NetApp NFS Plugin for VMware VAAI

2.0-15

NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager

9.11

NetApp SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere

4.7

About the Authors

John George, Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco Systems, Inc.

John has been involved in designing, developing, validating, and supporting the FlexPod Converged Infrastructure since it was developed almost 12 years ago. Before his roles with FlexPod, he supported and administered a large worldwide training network and VPN infrastructure. John holds a master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Clemson University.

Roney Daniel, Technical Marketing Engineer, Hybrid Cloud Infra & OEM Solutions, NetApp Inc.

Roney Daniel is a Technical Marketing engineer at NetApp. He has over 25 years of experience in the networking industry. Prior to NetApp, Roney worked at Cisco Systems in various roles with Cisco TAC, Financial Test Lab, Systems and solution engineering BUs and Cisco IT. He has a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication engineering and is a data center Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE 42731).

Kamini Singh, Technical Marketing Engineer, Hybrid Cloud Infra & OEM Solutions, NetApp

Kamini Singh is a Technical Marketing engineer at NetApp. She has three years of experience in data center infrastructure solutions. Kamini focuses on FlexPod hybrid cloud infrastructure solution design, implementation, validation, automation, and sales enablement. Kamini holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication and a master’s degree in Communication Systems.

Acknowledgements

For their support and contribution to the design, validation, and creation of this Cisco Validated Design, the authors would like to thank:

·    Haseeb Niazi, Principle Engineer, Cisco Systems, Inc.

·    Jyh-shing Chen, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, NetApp

Appendix

This appendix is organized into the following:

·    Compute

·    Network

·    Storage

·    Virtualization

·    Interoperability Matrix

·      Glossary of Acronyms

·      Glossary of Terms

Compute

Cisco Intersight: https://www.intersight.com

Cisco Intersight Managed Mode: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/Intersight/b_Intersight_Managed_Mode_Configuration_Guide.html

Cisco Unified Computing System: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html

Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnects: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs6536-fabric-interconnect-ds.html

Network

Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/index.html

Cisco MDS 9132T Switches: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/storage-networking/mds-9100-series-multilayer-fabric-switches/datasheet-c78-739613.html

Storage

NetApp ONTAP: https://docs.netapp.com/ontap-9/index.jsp

NetApp Active IQ Unified Manager: https://community.netapp.com/t5/Tech-ONTAP-Blogs/Introducing-NetApp-Active-IQ-Unified-Manager-9-11/ba-p/435519

ONTAP Storage Connector for Cisco Intersight: https://www.netapp.com/pdf.html?item=/media/25001-tr-4883.pdf

ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/ontap-tools-vmware-vsphere/index.html

NetApp SnapCenter: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/snapcenter/index.html

Virtualization

VMware vCenter Server: http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html

VMware vSphere: https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere

Interoperability Matrix

Cisco UCS Hardware Compatibility Matrix: https://ucshcltool.cloudapps.cisco.com/public/

VMware and Cisco Unified Computing System: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility

NetApp Interoperability Matrix Tool: http://support.netapp.com/matrix/

Glossary of Acronyms

·      AAA—Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting

·      ACP—Access-Control Policy

·      ACI—Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure

·      ACK—Acknowledge or Acknowledgement

·      ACL—Access-Control List

·      AD—Microsoft Active Directory

·      AFI—Address Family Identifier

·      AMP—Cisco Advanced Malware Protection

·      AP—Access Point

·      API—Application Programming Interface

·      APIC— Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (ACI)

·      ASA—Cisco Adaptative Security Appliance

·      ASM—Any-Source Multicast (PIM)

·      ASR—Aggregation Services Router

·      Auto-RP—Cisco Automatic Rendezvous Point protocol (multicast)

·      AVC—Application Visibility and Control

·      BFD—Bidirectional Forwarding Detection

·      BGP—Border Gateway Protocol

·      BMS—Building Management System

·      BSR—Bootstrap Router (multicast)

·      BYOD—Bring Your Own Device

·      CAPWAP—Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points Protocol

·      CDP—Cisco Discovery Protocol

·      CEF—Cisco Express Forwarding

·      CMD—Cisco Meta Data

·      CPU—Central Processing Unit

·      CSR—Cloud Services Routers

·      CTA—Cognitive Threat Analytics

·      CUWN—Cisco Unified Wireless Network

·      CVD—Cisco Validated Design

·      CYOD—Choose Your Own Device

·      DC—Data Center

·      DHCP—Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

·      DM—Dense-Mode (multicast)

·      DMVPN—Dynamic Multipoint Virtual Private Network

·      DMZ—Demilitarized Zone (firewall/networking construct)

·      DNA—Cisco Digital Network Architecture

·      DNS—Domain Name System

·      DORA—Discover, Offer, Request, ACK (DHCP Process)

·      DWDM—Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing

·      ECMP—Equal Cost Multi Path

·      EID—Endpoint Identifier

·      EIGRP—Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol

·      EMI—Electromagnetic Interference

·      ETR—Egress Tunnel Router (LISP)

·      EVPN—Ethernet Virtual Private Network (BGP EVPN with VXLAN data plane)

·      FHR—First-Hop Router (multicast)

·      FHRP—First-Hop Redundancy Protocol

·      FMC—Cisco Firepower Management Center

·      FTD—Cisco Firepower Threat Defense

·      GBAC—Group-Based Access Control

·      GbE—Gigabit Ethernet

·      Gbit/s—Gigabits Per Second (interface/port speed reference)

·      GRE—Generic Routing Encapsulation

·      GRT—Global Routing Table

·      HA—High-Availability

·      HQ—Headquarters

·      HSRP—Cisco Hot-Standby Routing Protocol

·      HTDB—Host-tracking Database (SD-Access control plane node construct)

·      IBNS—Identity-Based Networking Services (IBNS 2.0 is the current version)

·      ICMP— Internet Control Message Protocol

·      IDF—Intermediate Distribution Frame; essentially a wiring closet.

·      IEEE—Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

·      IETF—Internet Engineering Task Force

·      IGP—Interior Gateway Protocol

·      IID—Instance-ID (LISP)

·      IOE—Internet of Everything

·      IoT—Internet of Things

·      IP—Internet Protocol

·      IPAM—IP Address Management

·      IPS—Intrusion Prevention System

·      IPSec—Internet Protocol Security

·      ISE—Cisco Identity Services Engine

·      ISR—Integrated Services Router

·      IS-IS—Intermediate System to Intermediate System routing protocol

·      ITR—Ingress Tunnel Router (LISP)

·      LACP—Link Aggregation Control Protocol

·      LAG—Link Aggregation Group

·      LAN—Local Area Network

·      L2 VNI—Layer 2 Virtual Network Identifier; as used in SD-Access Fabric, a VLAN.

·      L3 VNI— Layer 3 Virtual Network Identifier; as used in SD-Access Fabric, a VRF.

·      LHR—Last-Hop Router (multicast)

·      LISP—Location Identifier Separation Protocol

·      MAC—Media Access Control Address (OSI Layer 2 Address)

·      MAN—Metro Area Network

·      MEC—Multichassis EtherChannel, sometimes referenced as MCEC

·      MDF—Main Distribution Frame; essentially the central wiring point of the network.

·      MnT—Monitoring and Troubleshooting Node (Cisco ISE persona)

·      MOH—Music on Hold

·      MPLS—Multiprotocol Label Switching

·      MR—Map-resolver (LISP)

·      MS—Map-server (LISP)

·      MSDP—Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (multicast)

·      MTU—Maximum Transmission Unit

·      NAC—Network Access Control

·      NAD—Network Access Device

·      NAT—Network Address Translation

·      NBAR—Cisco Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR2 is the current version).

·      NFV—Network Functions Virtualization

·      NSF—Non-Stop Forwarding

·      OSI—Open Systems Interconnection model

·      OSPF—Open Shortest Path First routing protocol

·      OT—Operational Technology

·      PAgP—Port Aggregation Protocol

·      PAN—Primary Administration Node (Cisco ISE persona)

·      PCI DSS—Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

·      PD—Powered Devices (PoE)

·      PETR—Proxy-Egress Tunnel Router (LISP)

·      PIM—Protocol-Independent Multicast

·      PITR—Proxy-Ingress Tunnel Router (LISP)

·      PnP—Plug-n-Play

·      PoE—Power over Ethernet (Generic term, may also refer to IEEE 802.3af, 15.4W at PSE)

·      PoE+—Power over Ethernet Plus (IEEE 802.3at, 30W at PSE)

·      PSE—Power Sourcing Equipment (PoE)

·      PSN—Policy Service Node (Cisco ISE persona)

·      pxGrid—Platform Exchange Grid (Cisco ISE persona and publisher/subscriber service)

·      PxTR—Proxy-Tunnel Router (LISP – device operating as both a PETR and PITR)

·      QoS—Quality of Service

·      RADIUS—Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service

·      REST—Representational State Transfer

·      RFC—Request for Comments Document (IETF)

·      RIB—Routing Information Base

·      RLOC—Routing Locator (LISP)

·      RP—Rendezvous Point (multicast)

·      RP—Redundancy Port (WLC)

·      RP—Route Processer

·      RPF—Reverse Path Forwarding

·      RR—Route Reflector (BGP)

·      RTT—Round-Trip Time

·      SA—Source Active (multicast)

·      SAFI—Subsequent Address Family Identifiers (BGP)

·      SD—Software-Defined

·      SDA—Cisco Software Defined-Access

·      SDN—Software-Defined Networking

·      SFP—Small Form-Factor Pluggable (1 GbE transceiver)

·      SFP+— Small Form-Factor Pluggable (10 GbE transceiver)

·      SGACL—Security-Group ACL

·      SGT—Scalable Group Tag, sometimes reference as Security Group Tag

·      SM—Spare-mode (multicast)

·      SNMP—Simple Network Management Protocol

·      SSID—Service Set Identifier (wireless)

·      SSM—Source-Specific Multicast (PIM)

·      SSO—Stateful Switchover

·      STP—Spanning-tree protocol

·      SVI—Switched Virtual Interface

·      SVL—Cisco StackWise Virtual

·      SWIM—Software Image Management

·      SXP—Scalable Group Tag Exchange Protocol

·      Syslog—System Logging Protocol

·      TACACS+—Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System Plus

·      TCP—Transmission Control Protocol (OSI Layer 4)

·      UCS— Cisco Unified Computing System

·      UDP—User Datagram Protocol (OSI Layer 4)

·      UPoE—Cisco Universal Power Over Ethernet (60W at PSE)

·      UPoE+— Cisco Universal Power Over Ethernet Plus (90W at PSE)

·      URL—Uniform Resource Locator

·      VLAN—Virtual Local Area Network

·      VM—Virtual Machine

·      VN—Virtual Network, analogous to a VRF in SD-Access

·      VNI—Virtual Network Identifier (VXLAN)

·      vPC—virtual Port Channel (Cisco Nexus)

·      VPLS—Virtual Private LAN Service

·      VPN—Virtual Private Network

·      VPNv4—BGP address family that consists of a Route-Distinguisher (RD) prepended to an IPv4 prefix

·      VPWS—Virtual Private Wire Service

·      VRF—Virtual Routing and Forwarding

·      VSL—Virtual Switch Link (Cisco VSS component)

·      VSS—Cisco Virtual Switching System

·      VXLAN—Virtual Extensible LAN

·      WAN—Wide-Area Network

·      WLAN—Wireless Local Area Network (generally synonymous with IEEE 802.11-based networks)

·      WoL—Wake-on-LAN

·      xTR—Tunnel Router (LISP – device operating as both an ETR and ITR)

Glossary of Terms

This glossary addresses some terms used in this document, for the purposes of aiding understanding. This is not a complete list of all multicloud terminology. Some Cisco product links are supplied here also, where considered useful for the purposes of clarity, but this is by no means intended to be a complete list of all applicable Cisco products.

aaS/XaaS

(IT capability provided as a Service)

Some IT capability, X, provided as a service (XaaS). Some benefits are:

●  The provider manages the design, implementation, deployment, upgrades, resiliency, scalability, and overall delivery of the service and the infrastructure that supports it.

●  There are very low barriers to entry, so that services can be quickly adopted and dropped in response to business demand, without the penalty of inefficiently utilized CapEx.

●  The service charge is an IT OpEx cost (pay-as-you-go), whereas the CapEx and the service infrastructure is the responsibility of the provider.

●  Costs are commensurate to usage and hence more easily controlled with respect to business demand and outcomes.

Such services are typically implemented as “microservices,” which are accessed via REST APIs. This architectural style supports composition of service components into systems. Access to and management of aaS assets is via a web GUI and/or APIs, such that Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) techniques can be used for automation, for example, Ansible and Terraform.

The provider can be any entity capable of implementing an aaS “cloud-native” architecture. The cloud-native architecture concept is well-documented and supported by open-source software and a rich ecosystem of services such as training and consultancy. The provider can be an internal IT department or any of many third-party companies using and supporting the same open-source platforms.

Service access control, integrated with corporate IAM, can be mapped to specific users and business activities, enabling consistent policy controls across services, wherever they are delivered from.

Ansible

An infrastructure automation tool, used to implement processes for instantiating and configuring IT service components, such as VMs on an IaaS platform. Supports the consistent execution of processes defined in YAML “playbooks” at scale, across multiple targets. Because the Ansible artefacts (playbooks) are text-based, they can be stored in a Source Code Management (SCM) system, such as GitHub. This allows for software development like processes to be applied to infrastructure automation, such as, Infrastructure-as-code (see IaC below).

https://www.ansible.com

AWS

(Amazon Web Services)

Provider of IaaS and PaaS.

https://aws.amazon.com

Azure

Microsoft IaaS and PaaS.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/

Co-located data center

“A colocation center (CoLo)…is a type of data center where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and physical security for the server, storage, and networking equipment of other firms and also connect them to a variety of telecommunications and network service providers with a minimum of cost and complexity.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation_centre

Containers

(Docker)

A (Docker) container is a means to create a package of code for an application and its dependencies, such that the application can run on different platforms which support the Docker environment. In the context of aaS, microservices are typically packaged within Linux containers orchestrated by Kubernetes (K8s).

https://www.docker.com

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systems-management/containerplatform/index.html

DevOps

The underlying principle of DevOps is that the application development and operations teams should work closely together, ideally within the context of a toolchain that automates the stages of development, test, deployment, monitoring, and issue handling. DevOps is closely aligned with IaC, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), and Agile software development practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CI/CD

Edge compute

Edge compute is the idea that it can be more efficient to process data at the edge of a network, close to the endpoints that originate that data, or to provide virtualized access services, such as at the network edge. This could be for reasons related to low latency response, reduction of the amount of unprocessed data being transported, efficiency of resource utilization, and so on. The generic label for this is Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), or Mobile Edge Computing for mobile networks specifically.

From an application experience perspective, it is important to be able to utilize, at the edge, the same operations model, processes, and tools used for any other compute node in the system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_edge_computing

IaaS

(Infrastructure as-a-Service)

Infrastructure components provided aaS, located in data centers operated by a provider, typically accessed over the public Internet. IaaS provides a base platform for the deployment of workloads, typically with containers and Kubernetes (K8s).

IaC

(Infrastructure as-Code)

Given the ability to automate aaS via APIs, the implementation of the automation is typically via Python code, Ansible playbooks, and similar. These automation artefacts are programming code that define how the services are consumed. As such, they can be subject to the same code management and software development regimes as any other body of code. This means that infrastructure automation can be subject to all of the quality and consistency benefits, CI/CD, traceability, automated testing, compliance checking, and so on, that could be applied to any coding project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_code

IAM

(Identity and Access Management)

IAM is the means to control access to IT resources so that only those explicitly authorized to access given resources can do so. IAM is an essential foundation to a secure multicloud environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_management

IBM

(Cloud)

IBM IaaS and PaaS.

https://www.ibm.com/cloud

Intersight

Cisco Intersight™ is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) infrastructure lifecycle management platform that delivers simplified configuration, deployment, maintenance, and support.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/intersight/index.html

GCP

(Google Cloud Platform)

Google IaaS and PaaS.

https://cloud.google.com/gcp

Kubernetes

(K8s)

Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

https://kubernetes.io

Microservices

A microservices architecture is characterized by processes implementing fine-grained services, typically exposed via REST APIs and which can be composed into systems. The processes are often container-based, and the instantiation of the services often managed with Kubernetes. Microservices managed in this way are intrinsically well suited for deployment into IaaS environments, and as such, are the basis of a cloud native architecture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microservices

PaaS

(Platform-as-a-Service)

PaaS is a layer of value-add services, typically for application development, deployment, monitoring, and general lifecycle management. The use of IaC with IaaS and PaaS is very closely associated with DevOps practices.

Private on-premises data center

A data center infrastructure housed within an environment owned by a given enterprise is distinguished from other forms of data center, with the implication that the private data center is more secure, given that access is restricted to those authorized by the enterprise. Thus, circumstances can arise where very sensitive IT assets are only deployed in a private data center, in contrast to using public IaaS. For many intents and purposes, the underlying technology can be identical, allowing for hybrid deployments where some IT assets are privately deployed but also accessible to other assets in public IaaS. IAM, VPNs, firewalls, and similar are key technologies needed to underpin the security of such an arrangement.

REST API

Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs is a generic term for APIs accessed over HTTP(S), typically transporting data encoded in JSON or XML. REST APIs have the advantage that they support distributed systems, communicating over HTTP, which is a well-understood protocol from a security management perspective. REST APIs are another element of a cloud-native applications architecture, alongside microservices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer

SaaS

(Software-as-a-Service)

End-user applications provided “aaS” over the public Internet, with the underlying software systems and infrastructure owned and managed by the provider.

SAML

(Security Assertion Markup Language)

Used in the context of Single-Sign-On (SSO) for exchanging authentication and authorization data between an identity provider, typically an IAM system, and a service provider (some form of SaaS). The SAML protocol exchanges XML documents that contain security assertions used by the aaS for access control decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Language

Terraform

An open-source IaC software tool for cloud services, based on declarative configuration files.

https://www.terraform.io

Feedback

For comments and suggestions about this guide and related guides, join the discussion on Cisco Community at https://cs.co/en-cvds.

CVD Program

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