Designing a Nexus 7 and 5K configuration into existing LAN

[thekid1970]

I was wondering if anybody has experience with Nexus 7 and 5k switches. What I’m trying to figure out is the basics of connectivity from these devices to my network.

1.) I need some light on the management ports on the nexus 7 and 5k. It appears the only enabled port you have is the out of band management port (mgmt 0), mgmt 1 is not enabled, is this true and is it true on both devices?

2.) I need to find out how many ports will it take connecting the nexus switches to my LAN switch which is a 6506, also is the connection or connections 1 or 10gig. I'm pretty sure it's only 1 gig

3.) How should I design my new nexus management ports to access them with my other access switches? I’m assuming I would create a vlans so I can separate the traffic.

If there are any examples or documentation that you can point to me or have any experience. I would appreciate any help with this.

Thanks,

[Collin Clark]

thekid1970 wrote:
I was wondering if anybody has experience with Nexus 7 and 5k switches. What I’m trying to figure out is the basics of connectivity from these devices to my network.
1.) I need some light on the management ports on the nexus 7 and 5k. It appears the only enabled port you have is the out of band management port (mgmt 0), mgmt 1 is not enabled, is this true and is it true on both devices?
2.) I need to find out how many ports will it take connecting the nexus switches to my LAN switch which is a 6506, also is the connection or connections 1 or 10gig. I'm pretty sure it's only 1 gig
3.) How should I design my new nexus management ports to access them with my other access switches? I’m assuming I would create a vlans so I can separate the traffic. 
If there are any examples or documentation that you can point to me or have any experience. I would appreciate any help with this.
Thanks,

1) I have only seen mgmt 0 interface. Where are you seeing mgmt 1?

2) It can be 1GB or 10GB, depends on what you have in your 6509 and at what speed you want you to connect them together

3) I would put the in your management VLAN just like any other network device

Here's a write up I did on the mgmt ports.

https://packetpros.com/cisco_kb/nexus/mgmt.html

Hope it helps.

[thekid1970]

Collin,

I appreciate the quick response. I was reading some documentation on the nexus there’s mgmt 0 and mgmt 1, but the mgmt is not enabled. The right up helped. So my nexus 7 k has one mgmt port and my 5k has one mgmt port. So I guess that’s two ports/interfaces that I would be counting for. Here’s a dumb question where would these mgmt ports be connecting to, will it uplinked to an interface on my 65k switch?

[Collin Clark]

It depends on your management VLAN. We had dedicated switches that did not touch production equipment. All they have to do is terminate in a switch that has your managment VLAN and assign the port to the management VLAN. And yes, you will have one mgmt port per physical device.

[Christopher Russell]

1) Correct, both the N5K and N7K just use MGMT0

2) I was not sure here if you meant connecting the N7K/N5K to a 6500 from a network traffic perspective, or if you mean connecting the MGMT interface to the 6500?  If the former, on the N7K it depends on the module, we have both 10G and 1G module options on the N7K, on the N5K all ports are 10G and depending on the exact model of N5K some/all can also support 1G.  If however you mean the MGMT interface, then they are 1G on both N7K and N5K.

3) Ideally you want your MGMT network to be OOB (out of band), in other words to have no infrastructure incommon with your main network, this means even during a major network issue you can reach your devices.  It makes sense to use VLANs that don't exist anywhere on the network, have a device that is not in the forwarding path for your main network, then connect all the management interfaces to this device (depending on the location of your devices you may need to spread these over several interconnected OOB devices).

[thekid1970]

Hey guys, thanks for all your help.

My 65k switch and Nexus 5/7k will be in a rack or racks close to each other. My main goal is trying to figure out how many ports will I need to connect to manage these new devices either 1 or 10 gig. So your information is helping out which it seems to be mgmt0 1 gig. Create a VLAN for mgmt purposes and all mgmt interfaces get connected to my 6k switch. So I have attached a drawing so I can understand. Does the 5/7k get uplinked to the core 6k switch on two interface gig ports?

Is that the best way to design this?

[Collin Clark]

Yup. You may want to use a low cost switch for management. On a per port basis the 6500 is pretty expensive. But you know your network, so the 6500 may be best.

[thekid1970]

Collin,

This is great. I’m starting to get it. I do have a switch that I'm not using and it's a cisco 3650 switch. My goal was to find out the physical connectivity from the 5/7k’s to my network. So either way there’s two physical ports that I will need for mgmt purpose. So I will create a mgmt vlan and have all three devices (6k or 3650 switch, 5 and 7k nexus will be connected in this OOB vlan, is that correct? Not to confuse myself will I be creating a VRF for purpose.

Also do you have any experiences of vlans, I’m trying to come up with, what would be a good template to have with me on the number of vlans that I should be thinking about. I know every network is different but i was thinking of some type of standard vlans that people use, if there is such a thing.

Thanks again.

[Collin Clark · Accepted solution]

You right on with the management stuff. Creating a VRF is a good idea too. Generally here are VLANs we suggest-

Users

Servers (broken out further by function or BU)

Wireless

IP Phones

IP Video Conferencing

Printers

Video Surveillance

ATMs and other non-secure 3rd party devices

Management

Native Trunking

SAN

[thekid1970]

thanks for all your help. i really appreciate it.