Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Virtual Switch Module Placement in the Cisco Unified Computing System

[pmajumder]

Hi All,
I am reading a Cisco article titled "Best Practices in Deploying Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches on Cisco UCS B and C Series Cisco UCS Manager Servers" http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9902/white_paper_c11-558242.html

Lot's of excellent information, but the section that puzzles me has to do with the VSM's module placement in the UCS. The article lists 4 options in order of preference, but does not provide any clarification or the reasons behind the recommendations. The options are as follows:

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Option 1: VSM External to the Cisco Unified Computing System on the Cisco Nexus 1010

In this scenario, management operations of the virtual environment is accomplished in an identical method to existing non-virtualized environments. With multiple VSM instances on the Nexus 1010 multiple vCenter data centers can be supported.
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Option 2: VSM Outside the Cisco Unified Computing System on the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series VEM

This model allows for centralized management of the virtual infrastructure and has proven very stable..
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Option 3: VSM Outside the Cisco Unified Computing System on the VMware vSwitch

This model provides isolation of the managed devices, and it migrates well to the appliance model of the Cisco Nexus 1010 Virtual Services Appliance. A possible concern here is the management and operational model of the networking links between the VSM and the VEM devices.
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Option 4: VSM Inside the Cisco Unified Computing System on the VMware vSwitch

This model also was stable in the test deployments. A possible concern here is the management and operational model of the networking links between the VSM and the VEM devices, and having duplicate switching infrastructures within your Cisco Unified Computing System.
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As a newbie to both the Nexus 100V and UCS, I am hoping that someone can help me understand the physical setup of these options, and equally importantly provide a more detailed explanation of each of the options and the resoning behind the preferences (pro's and con's).

Thank you,
Pradeep  

[Jeremy Waldrop]

Because I have specific QoS policies for esx-mgmt and esx-vmotion. I have vmotion mapped to the Bronze class and management mapped to the Silver class. VM traffic is mapped to Platinum and FC to the FC class. If IP storage is used I create an esx-nfs policy and map it to Platinum as well.

With ESXi 4.1 and up vMotion can potentially use up to 8GB of bandwidth. If you have an ESX host with lots of VMs and you put it into mainetenance mode vMotion could potentially cause performance issues for VM networking or other traffic.