Below are some of my notes on the 1000v.
General
No spanning
tree. Each VEM is designed to prevent
loops in the topology.
Port-channels for
uplinks only. Virtual ports cannot be
bundled into a port-channel.
VSM
Primary and
secondary VSM’s are supported and normally run on different ESXi hosts for redundancy.
VEM
Up to 64 VEMs per
VSM
Each hypervisor has
a VEM
Traffic is locally
switched
Port Profile
Attributes
VLAN
PVLAB
VXLAN
ACL
QOS
CISF (Catalyst Integrated Security
Features)
VSD (Virtual Service Domain)
Port-channel
Port Security
LACP
LACP offload
Netflow
VRRP
UUFB (Unknown Unicast Flood Blocking)
Control Modes ( L2 and L3)
L3
VEMs can be on
different subnets from the VSMs and other VEMs.
VSM active and
standby should be L2 adjacent.
Each VEM needs a
designated VMKernel NIC interface that
is attached to the VEM that communicates with the VSM. This L# control vmknic must have a system
port profile applied to it.
Management, Control and Packet VLANs
Control – used for
communication between the VSM and the VEM.
The control interface is the first interface on the VSM and is labeled
“network Adapter 1” in the virtual machine properties.
Control - is used for the following:
·
VSM configuration commands to each
VEM and their responses.
·
VEM notifications to the VSM. For
example, a VEM notifies the VSM of the attachment or
detachment of ports to the
Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS).
·
VEM Netflow exports that are sent to
the VSM, where they are forwarded to a NetFlow Collector.
·
VSM active to
standby synchronization for high availability.
Management – system login and is the mgmt0 interface.
The management interface is the second interface on the VSM
and is labeled “Network Adapter 2” in the
virtual machine network properties.
Packet – Not used
in the L3 control mode. The packet
interface is the third interface on the VSM and is labeled “Network Adapter 3”
in the virtual machine network properties.
·
The packet VLAN is used to tunnel network protocol packets
between the VSM and the VEMs such as the Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP), Link
Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), and Internet Group Management Protocol
(IGMP).
·
The packet VLAN is also used for communication between the
VSM and the VEMs within a switch domain.
System Port Profiles
System port
profiles can establish and protect ports and VLANs that need to be configured
before the VEM
contacts the VSM.
When a server
administrator adds a host to the DVS, its VEM must be able to contact the VSM.
Because the ports and VLANs used for this communication are not yet in place,
the VSM sends a minimal configuration, including system port profiles and
system VLANs, to the vCenter Server, which then propagates it to the VEM.
When configuring a
system port profile, you assign VLANs and designate them as system VLANs. The
port profile becomes a system port profile and is included in the Cisco Nexus
1000V opaque data. Interfaces using the system port profile, which are members
of one of the defined system VLANs, are automatically enabled and forwarding
traffic when the VMware ESX starts even if the VEM does not have communication with
the VSM. The critical host functions are enabled even if the VMware ESX host
starts and cannot communicate with the VSM
