Nexus Fabric Manager x Cisco VTS

[paulo_souza]

Dear coleagues,

I have a customer that uses N1K, N2K, N5K and N7K in a traditional architecture inside his datacenter. Today, they are implementing a VXLAN BGP EVPN Fabric using N5K6 and N7K, and I need to recommend an SDN solution integrated with CA Process Automation, but I have some doubts:

Will Nexus Fabric Manager replace Cisco VTS to manage the VXLAN BGP EVPN Fabric? Now Cisco NFM supports only N9K. When will it be supporting N2K, N5K and N7K switches?

Can I manage the legacy network (STP, VPC L2 and L3 protocols) using some of these tools? or  would I have to use something else?

Thanks in advance,

Paulo

[Branden Varney]

Hi Paulo,

There are no plans for NFM to replace VTS. NFM is only intended to create fabrics from green field N9K's at the moment. N2K's are the only other model switch that are set to be added currently as FEX's in post 1.1 release off of N9K leafs.

[paulo_souza]

Branden,

Thanks for your answer about Cisco NFM.

BR,

Paulo 

[leon.mflai]

Hi,

My customer has deployment base in standard 3-Tier Cisco Design 7K (L3 Core + VPC), 5K (L2 + VPC) + 2K (FEX) in Active-Passive DC mode without any DCI LAN extension.

Most components of customer's N7K are facing EOL soon and they wants to deploy SDN network fafric.

We are selling NXOS-based N9.5K + N9.3K and claim it is VXLAN fabric ready infrastructure and assume VXLAN fabric will not be extended to existing N5K / N2K. 

By knowing that provisioning VxLAN tunnels on NXOS, we would like to propose VXLAN tunnel provisioning tools to our customer. We are puzzled to sell NFM or VTS? 

Can someone give me some hints?

Thanks

Leon

[Jeffrey Saelens]

Paulo,

What specifically are you trying to accomplish with this deployment? Specifically what is VTS not providing you that you think you need? Currently the only platform I see you listed not currently supported by VTS is the N2K but the long term goal is to support the entire nexus family.

Can I manage the legacy network (STP, VPC L2 and L3 protocols) using some of these tools? or  would I have to use something else?

This question confuses me a tiny bit. Where would you implementing STP in this scenario as the purpose of moving to BGP-EVPN is to avoid spanning tree and keep all ports in a forwarding configuration. Would you have separate L2 networks southbound of the TORs? As far as the other features, there is a lot of stuff on the road map such as L3 services on border leafs scheduled for this year. Are there specific technologies you are looking to employ?

[paulo_souza]

Hi Jeffrey,

Today this customer has a network in a traditional architecture using N7K, N5K and N2K with VPC at L2 layer (Access to Aggregation) and OSPF at L3 layer (Aggregation to Core), and he is implementing a new PoD with VXLAN BGP EVPN Fabric technology, and I need to recommend an SDN solution to automate, mainly, the network provisioning of the network. The servers will be migrated gradually to the new PoD.

With VTS I'll manage only the fabric (new PoD), not the legacy network to configure vlans, for example. I guess that UCS Director could be used for that. Correct?

Thanks.

Paulo