Nexus 1000v and UCS PALO

[Nuno Filipe Alves Ferreira]

Hello all,

I have an environment where currently I have a UCS System with 2 ESX hosts on it.

One of the hosts has a VSM and it is added into the Nexus 1000v dVS (I still have one physical interface on the vswitch with Service Console, VMotion, VSM LANS, etc)

On another blade I have installed a PALO card and a service profile with 3 physical NICS and 20 dynamic NICS to do VN-Link in Hardware. In this physical server I have also ESX and I have configured one of the 'physical' interfaces to be on the dVS created in UCS.

All the above is working without a problem. Now I have a few questions:

Is there a way to integrate the 2 dVS ? I mean lets say I want to vMotion a machine that is in the Nexus 1000v dVS to the host that is on the UCS dVS, is there a way to do this ? (I guess there isn't)

My second question is: I currently have one 'physical' interface on the host running on the PALO blade which I wanted to join to the Nexus 1000c dVS. This fails all the time and my question is: Is it possible for a host to be on 2 different dVS ? Obviously with different interfaces.

My third question is: If I remove the ESX Host from the PALO dVS and try to add it to the Nexus 1000v dVS ... When it reaches around 60% of the association the ESX host crashes and starts a crash dump .... My question is: To do this do I need to remove the Dynamic NICS from the HOST (from the Service Profile I mean)? Why is this failing ?

I guess there will be a lot of information missing that if you want me to supply please feel free to ask .. Everything is running the latest versions (UCS - latest versions of FWs and NX-OS - VMWare, VUM, vCenter all latest versions).

Thanks

Nuno Ferreira

[Jeremy Waldrop]

First question: You will not be able to vMotion a VM from a host mananged by a N1KV vDS to a host managed by a UCSM dVS. The reason for this is that the VMware Port Group name will be different. For example lets say you have created a port profile in N1KV named Servers and a port profie in UCSM named Servers. The Port Group name that is displayed in vSphere will be Servers(n1kv-switch-name) and for the UCSM it will be Servers(ucsm-switch-name). If it were possible to name both the N1KV and UCSM dVS the same then a vMotoin between the two may be possible. I have never tried to name the vDS the same so I am not sure VMware would actually allow this.

Second question: If you have a dynamic vNIC connection policy defined in the service profile then you will never be able to add that blade to a N1KV vDS. The dynamic vNIC connection policies are only for a UCSM VN-link in hardware vDS.

For Palo integration with N1KV I recommend creating a service profile that has 4 vNICs (2 on Fabric A, 2 on Fabric B), 2 to be added to the N1KV vDS for VMs and 2 to be used on a standard vSwitch for the service console/vMotoin vmkernel. This way the deployment/troubleshooting is much easier. Having the service conole in the N1KV vDS is suppored and works but can be a real pain if you have mis-configured uplink port-profiles or if the host gest disconnected from vCenter.

For non-palo (menlo) blades you will be forced to put both vNICs in the N1KV vDS. I have done this before and it works but can be a PITA to troubleshoot.

[Nuno Filipe Alves Ferreira]

Jeremy,

     Starting with the bottom ... Yes it can be a pain to put everything in the Nexus dVS but I have another scenario where everything is there and yes I ran into some problems upon migration of the Service Console to the Nexus dVS but I have that covered and am very aware of the proper configs and limitations and to be honest it can be a pain but as you said and I agree if you dont have the PALO card then that's what you will need to do

     Regarding the other bits .. yes I had the impression that would be the case though I dont understand why the server crashes.

     Anyway I just wanted to confirm my assumptions were correct and that it was the Dynamic NICS that was causing the server to crash when I try to associate with the Nexus 1000v dVS.

     The one missing - I can assume that you can't have one host in 2 different dVSes then ?

Thanks

Nuno Ferreira

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Correct you can't have a host be a membor of both the N1KV and UCSM vDS. Yes, the PSOD is what will happen if you try to add a host with a dynamic vNIC connection policy to a N1KV switch.