Nexus 1000V Port Profiles

[Sandeep Singh]

• Introduction
• Virtual Ethernet Port Profiles
• Ethernet or Uplink Port Profiles
• Removing Port Profile
• Port Profile Inheritance
• Related Information

Introduction

Port profiles are the primary mechanism by which network policy is defined and applied to switch interfaces in a Nexus 1000V system. A port profile is a collection of interface level configuration commands, such as port mode, trunking commands, etc. Port profiles are created on the VSM and propagated to vCenter where they appear as port groups, where it is then available to apply to a virtual machine’s vNICs. In Cisco Nexus 1000V, port profiles are used to configure interfaces. A port profile can be assigned to multiple interfaces giving them all the same configuration. Changes to the port profile can be propagated automatically to the configuration of any interface assigned to it.

In the VMware vCenter Server, a port profile is represented as a port group. You assign the vEthernet or Ethernet interfaces to a port group in vCenter to do the following:
•Define port configuration by policy.

•Apply a single policy across a large number of ports.

Port profiles are created on the VSM and propagated to VMware vCenter Server as VMware port groups using the VMware VIM API. After propagation, a port profile appears within VMware vSphere Client and is available to apply to the vNICs on a virtual machine.

Virtual Ethernet Port Profiles

A vEth profile is a port profile that can be applied on virtual machines and on VMware virtual interfaces such as the VMware management, VMotion, or VMkernel iSCSI interface. As soon as the network administrator configures a vEth port profile, its configuration is propagated to VMware vCenter and made available as a port group.

A vEthernet port profile can be applied on virtual machine vNIC interfaces and is configured as follows:

port-profile type vethernet VM_Data

  vmware port-group

  switchport mode access

  switchport access vlan 101

  no shutdown

  state enabled

port-profile type vethernet service-console

  vmware port-group

  switchport mode access

  switchport access vlan 223

  no shutdown

  system vlan 223

  state enabled

port-profile type vethernet NFS

  vmware port-group

  switchport mode access

  switchport access vlan 224

  no shutdown

  state enabled

port-profile type vethernet Vmotion

  vmware port-group

  switchport mode access

  switchport access vlan 225

  no shutdown

  state enabled

Ethernet or Uplink Port Profiles

Ethernet port profiles are used to manage the Physical NICs within a VMware ESX Host.

Uplink port profiles are applied to a physical NIC when a VMware ESX host is first added to the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series. The server administrator is presented with a dialog box in which the administrator can select the physical NICs to be associated with the VEM and the particular uplink port profiles to be associated with the physical NICs. In addition, the server administrator can apply uplink port profiles to interfaces that are added to the VEM after the host has been added to the switch.

An uplink port profile is one which applies to a physical NIC within an ESXi host, as follows:

port-profile type ethernet Uplink-Management

  vmware port-group

  switchport mode trunk

  switchport trunk allowed vlan 100,107,109

  channel-group auto mode on active

  no shutdown

  state enabled

Features in New Releases

To maintain a consistent configuration among the interfaces in a port profile, the entire port profile configuration is applied to its member interfaces. This concept is called Atomic Inheritance. When you update the configuration in a port profile, its member interfaces are also updated. If the configuration fails, the port profile and its member interfaces are rolled back to the last known good configuration for the port profile. When an error occurs in port profile configuration the interfaces are shut down. This feature is called interface inheritance.

Removing Port Profile

Enter the following commands:

1. config t

2. no port-profile profile_name

3. show port-profile name profile_name

4. copy running-config startup-config

Port Profile Inheritance

To apply the configuration from an existing port profile as the default configuration for another port profile is called inheritance. The configuration of the parent port profile is copied to and stored in the child port profile. You can also override the inheritance by configuring the attributes explicitly in the child port profile. Inherited port profiles cannot be changed or removed from an interface using the Cisco Nexus 1000V CLI. You can change a setting directly on a port profile to override the inherited settings. You can also explicitly remove port profile inheritance, so that a port profile returns to the default settings, except where there has been a direct configuration.

Steps to Configure Inheritance

Step 1. config t

Step 2. port-profile [type {ethernet | vethernet}] child

Step 3. inherit port-profile master

Related Information

vPC Host Mode Pinning for Nexus 1000v

QoS configuration for 1000v in UC on UCS Environment