HOWTO: Migrate from vSwitch and/or DVS setup to Nexus 1000v setup

[robwu2006]

Hi All,

I'm in the middle of replacing the vSwitches and DVS's in our ESX environment to purely Cisco Nexus 1000v's. Our environment is a mixture of vSwitches and DVS's.

Is there any prerequisites I need to be aware of before to perform this migration?

Also any real life tips and hints would be great on this, as I have been reading thru all the installation guides from Cisco/VMware, but they seem to only outline brand new installations from what I can gather

We dont want to break the system in the middle of upgrading!

Look forward to hearing from everyone,

Cheers

R

[abbharga]

Hi Rob,

The following document should help you:

https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-15533

Feel free to let us know if you still have any queires.

./Abhinav

[robwu2006]

Hi Abhinav,

Thank you for the quick response!

That reference is excellent, although it doesn't cover the prerequisites questions in terms of if we have vSwitches and/or DVS's currently and want to move to Nexus 1000v:

- Does the 1000v have any dependence or prerequisites on existing vSwitch or DVS configuration?

- Does the 1000v totally replace the existing vSwitch(s)/DVS functionality, and is this independent of the vSwitch/DVS config?

- Can u have all 3 switch types( vSwitch/DVS/Nexus 1000v) running in the same environment?

- we have heard things about 'orphan' DVS switches etc post Nexus install, and that kinda puts lots of questions in our minds as to what actually happens when you install the Nexus 1000v ?

Please let me know if you require any further clarification?

Cheers,

R

[sachthak]

Hi Rob,

A first crack at your questions:

- Does the 1000v have any dependence or prerequisites on existing vSwitch or DVS configuration?

The 1000v will create a new DVS object on the VC. You can create port-profiles on the VSM which show up as portgroups on this new DVS object. You can then migrate your existing VMs to these port profile backed portgroups.

- Does the 1000v totally replace the existing vSwitch(s)/DVS functionality, and is this independent of the vSwitch/DVS config?

The 1000v uses the DVS api on vCenter, but all config on the DVS is independent. The Nexus 1000V VSM will manage all of the config for its DVS.

- Can u have all 3 switch types( vSwitch/DVS/Nexus 1000v) running in the same environment?

Yes you can, however, the advantage of moving all network contact points to a DVS gives you a single point of contact / management point for the virtual network. In the Nexus 1000V case, this point of contact for the network admin is the VSM.

-  we have heard things about 'orphan' DVS switches etc post Nexus  install, and that kinda puts lots of questions in our minds as to what  actually happens when you install the Nexus 1000v ?

The Nexus 1000V has two main components:

VSM: Virtual Supervisor Module (the control plane)

VEM: Virtual Ethernet Module (package installed on the 1000V managed ESX/ESXi hosts)

The basic flow of the Nexus 1000V install is:

- Install Nexus 1000V VSM VM (either standalone or a HA pair)

- Register VSM Extension Plugin Certificate in vCenter

- Connect VSM to vCenter (this creates the DVS object which is managed/owned by the VSMs Extension Certificate)

- Install VEM modules on hosts

- Add hosts to DVS

<At this point, your modules should be up and show in the VSM>

The orphaned DVS case only happens if the user deletes the VSM which has already created a DVS object on vCenter. To reclaim this DVS which no longer has a VSM (what we refer to as an orphaned DVS), you have to follow the steps in the other threads which you read. It is basically an error recovery scenario.

Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any confusions and we'll be glad to help.

Cheers,

Sachin

[robwu2006]

Hi Sachin,

Sorry for the delay in response,thank you very much for the responses, we will keep these in mind when we design and implement...

At this stage we are coming up with budget for this project, so once this is finalised I'll probably have a few more questions on this!..

As a side note, are their any diagrams available which visualise/compare the difference of where the vSwitch/DVS/Nexus sits within the VM environment?

I guess from a placement and and how the switch plumbs into the host/guest etc...

[sachthak]

Hi Rob,

I'll talk to a few folks and see if I can dig a document up showing this information.

Sachin