Cisco ACI MSO mix of VM-based and CASE-Base

[kumarH]

Can we mix Cisco VM-based with CASE-Based ACI MSO? For e.g Two VM-based MSO and one CASE-BAsed?

And what are the advantage of using Case-based MSO over VM-based MSO?

[Sergiu.Daniluk · Accepted solution]

Hi @kumarH 

You cannot mix VM based with CASE-Base, because for the CASE-Base MSO to work, it all needs to be using same form factor:

Cisco Application Service Engine itself can be deployed using a number of different form factors, such as a Cisco Application Service physical appliance (.iso), in a VMware ESX virtual machine (.ova), in Amazon Web Services (.ami), or in Linux KVM (.qcow), all of which are supported for Multi-Site Orchestrator installations. Keep in mind however, you must use the same form factor Service Engine for all Orchestrator nodes, mixing different form factors within the same Orchestrator cluster is not supported.

Ref: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/aci_multi-site/sw/2x/installation/Cisco-ACI-Multi-Site-Installation-Upgrade-Guide-221/m-multi-site-install-service-engine.html 

The advantage of CASE based MSO are:

+ security through Cisco Secured Development Lifecyle (CSDL)

+ removal of root access to Orchestrator application

+ file system protection

+ single click upgrades to future releases. 

Also, you have the Application Service Engine which provides a common platform to streamline multi-product integrations ( NIR, NIA, Intershight connector, MSO etc)

Stay safe,

Sergiu