Nexus Dashboard Operations, Release 3.1.1

 
Updated April 6, 2024
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Firmware Management (Cluster Upgrades)

This section describes how to manage different firmware versions and perform cluster upgrades.

The upgrade process involves uploading a new image and then deploying it. As such, the same workflow can be used for cluster firmware downgrades as well.

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The following sections provide reference information for firmware upgrades. For the latest upgrade process information, see the online version of the Nexus Dashboard Deployment Guide.

Prerequisites and Guidelines

Before you upgrade your existing Nexus Dashboard cluster:

  • Ensure that you have read the target release’s Release Notes for any changes in behavior, guidelines, and issues that may affect your upgrade.

    The upgrade process is the same for all Nexus Dashboard form factors. However, if your existing cluster is deployed using physical servers, VMware ESX, Linux KVM, Azure, or AWS, you will use the target release’s ISO image (nd-dk9.<version>.iso) to upgrade; if your existing cluster is deployed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you will use the RHEL-specific image (nd-rhel-<version>.tar).

  • Ensure that you have read the Release Notes and upgrade guides for any services you run in the existing cluster and plan to run on the target release for service-specific changes in behavior, guidelines, and issues that may affect your upgrade.

    You can find the service-specific documents at the following links:

  • If you are upgrading a physical Nexus Dashboard cluster, ensure that the nodes have a supported CIMC version for the target Nexus Dashboard release.

    Supported CIMC versions are listed in the Nexus Dashboard Release Notes for the target release.

    CIMC upgrade is described in detail in Upgrading CIMC.

  • You must perform configuration backups of your Nexus Dashboard and services before the upgrade to safeguard data and minimize any potential risk before proceeding with the upgrade.

  • You must disable all services running in the cluster before upgrading.

  • You must have valid DNS and NTP servers configured and reachable by all cluster nodes.

  • Ensure that your current Nexus Dashboard cluster is healthy.

    You can check the system status on the Overview page of the Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console or by logging in to one of the nodes as rescue-user and ensuring that the acs health command returns All components are healthy.

  • Ensure that no configuration changes are made to the cluster, such as adding secondary or standby nodes, while the upgrade is in progress.

  • After upgrading to this release, we recommend upgrading all the services to the latest version supported by this release. For a complete list of Nexus Dashboard and services interoperability support, see the Nexus Dashboard and Services Compatibility Matrix.

  • Nexus Dashboard does not support platform downgrades.

    If you want to downgrade to an earlier release, you will need to deploy a new cluster and reinstall the services.

Adding Images

Before you can upgrade your Nexus Dashboard cluster, you need to make the upgrade image available by adding it using the GUI.

  1. Download the Nexus Dashboard image.

    1. Browse to the Software Download page.

      https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286327743/type/286328258

    2. Choose the Nexus Dashboard version you want to download.

    3. Download the Cisco Nexus Dashboard image (nd-dk9.<version>.iso).

      note.svg

      You must download the .iso image for all upgrades, even if you used the VMware ESX .ova, Linux KVM .qcow2, or a cloud provider’s marketplace for initial cluster deployment.

    4. (Optional) Host the image on a web server in your environment.

      When you upload the image to your Nexus Dashboard cluster, you will have an option to provide a direct URL to the image.

  2. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  3. Add the image.

    1. From the main navigation menu, select Manage > Software Management.

    2. In the main pane, select the Images tab.

      The page will list any previously added images.

    3. In the main pane, click Add Image.

  4. In the Add Software Image window that opens, choose whether your image is stored on a remote server or local system.

    1. If specifying a remote image, provide the full URL to the image.

    2. If uploading a local image, click Choose File and select the image file from your local system.

      note.svg

      If uploading from a local machine, slow upload speeds may cause the session to timeout which can interrupt the transfer. We recommend at least 40Mbps upload speed and increasing the session timeout to 1800 seconds (from the default 1200). You can change session timeout in the Admin > Security page in your Nexus Dashboard GUI.

  5. Click Upload to upload the image.

    The Images tab will show the image upload progress, wait for it to finish before proceeding to the next section.

Upgrading the Cluster

Before you Begin

You must have the upgrade image already added to the Nexus Dashboard cluster as described in Adding Images.

To upgrade your cluster:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. Initiate an update.

    1. From the main navigation menu, select Manage > Software Management.

    2. In the main pane, select the Updates tab.

    3. Click Set up Update or Modify Details.

      If this is the first time you are upgrading your cluster, simply click the Setup Update button in the middle of the page.

      If you have previously upgraded the cluster, the last upgrade’s details will be displayed in this page instead of the Setup Update button. In this case, click the Modify Details button at the top right of the screen.

  3. In the Setup/Version Selection screen, select the target version and click Next to proceed.

    If you uploaded multiple images to your Nexus Dashboard, they will be listed here.

  4. Review the validation report and click Install to proceed with the upgrade.

    Before the upgrade is triggered, the system will perform a number of validation checks and show the report:

  5. In the Setup/Confirmation screen, review the details of the update and click Begin Install to proceed.

    The screen will proceed to the Install tab and you will be able to see the progress of each node.

    The process can take up to 20 minutes and you can navigate away from this screen in the meantime.

  6. Wait for the image installation to complete.

    You can check the installation status by navigating back to Operations > Firmware Management screen and clicking View Details link in the Last Status tile.

  7. Click Activate.

    If you navigated away from the installation screen, navigate back to Operations > Firmware Management screen and click View Details link in the Last Status tile.

    It may take up to 20 additional minute for all the cluster services to start and the GUI may become unavailable during this process. The page will automatically reload when the process is completed. You can track the activation process in the Activate screen as shown below.

Deleting Images

After an upgrade is completed, Nexus Dashboard will automatically remove the upgrade image that you uploaded for the upgrade. However, if you upload an upgrade image and then choose not to upgrade, you can delete the uploaded images using the following steps:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. From the main navigation menu, select Manage > Software Management.

  3. In the Nexus Dashboard Releases tile, click the trash icon next to the specific release image that you want to delete.

  4. In the Confirm Delete prompt, click OK to confirm.

Tech Support

Tech support enables you to collect logs and activities in the system for further troubleshooting by Cisco TAC. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides best-effort tech support collection and gives ability to download tech support for individual nodes, the whole cluster, or applications. Tech support files are hosted on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard and can be downloaded at any time.

To collect Tech Support information:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. Collect Tech Support.

    1. From the main navigation menu, select Analyze > Tech Support.

    2. In the main pane, click Collect Tech Support.

  3. In the Collect Tech Support window that opens, provide a description.

  4. From the Scope dropdown, select the category for which you want to collect tech support information.

    • System collects Infra tech support information.

    • App Store collects App Store tech support information.

    • Service-specific selections collects tech support information for that specific service.

  5. Click Collect.

    After you begin Tech Support collection, you can see the progress in the same screen.

    If for any reason the tech support collection process fails, you can also obtain the same information by logging into each node as the rescue-user and running one of the acs techsupport collect commands. For more information about specific techsupport collect command options, see Useful Commands.

  6. Download the Tech Support archive.

    After the collection is finished, you can download the archive by clicking Download next it:

If you want to delete an existing Tech Support package, simply select it in the Tech Support screen and choose Delete Tech Support from the Actions menu.

Backup and Restore

This section describes how to back up or restore Nexus Dashboard cluster configuration.

Creating Configuration Backups

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. Start a back up.

    1. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > Backup & Restore.

    2. In the main pane, select the Backup Jobs tab.

    3. In the main pane, click Backup Configuration.

  3. In the Backup Configuration window that opens, provide the Encryption Key and the File Name.

    The encryption key is used to encrypt the archive and must be at least 8 characters long.

  4. Click Download to start the backup.

    note.svg

    Cisco Nexus Dashboard does not store configuration backups or encryption keys, so you must download and maintain them outside the Nexus Dashboard cluster.

Restoring Configuration

Before you begin

If your current configuration contains one or more of the following settings, you must remove them before restoring any backups:

To restore a configuration backup:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. Begin configuration restore.

    1. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > Backup & Restore.

    2. In the main pane, select the Restore Jobs tab.

    3. In the main pane, click the Restore Configuration.

      You do not need to select one of the listed backups. You will be asked to upload the configuration backup file in the next screen.

  3. Provide the details.

    1. Provide the Encryption Key.

      This must be the same encryption key that you used when creating the backup.

    2. Click Choose File and select the backup file.

      Cisco Nexus Dashboard does not store configuration backups, so you must upload the backup file before restoring it

      The file must be in .tgz or tar.gz format.

  4. Click Import to start the restore process.

History and Logs

The Admin > History and Logs page allows you to see the system-wide list of events and alerts in your Nexus Dashboard cluster.

Events

The Events tab enables you to easily access your Nexus Dashboard’s platform-level events and audit logs. The Audit Logs tab displays all events that occur during the cluster operation. In addition to viewing the events and logs directly in the Nexus Dashboard GUI, you can also configure the cluster to stream the events to an external syslog server, as described in System Settings.

The Events tab includes high severity events that may require your attention to resolve:

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Figure 1. Events

You can view a summary of all critical events in the list or double-click any specific event for additional information about it. After you have viewed and analyzed an event, you can choose to acknowledge and clear it by clicking the Actions (…​) menu next to the event in the list.

Audit Logs

Nexus Dashboard audit logging is automatically enabled when you first deploy the cluster and captures the operational changes made by the users in the environment.

You can view the audit logs directly in the GUI by selecting Analyze > History and Logs from the main navigation menu.

Note that the logs are not sorted by default; you can sort the list by clicking on any of the column headings.

You can choose to filter the list using the Filter by attributes field and providing a specific attribute and value pair.

504687.jpg
Figure 2. Audit Logs

Additionally, to view detailed information about a specific entry, simply click the entry in the list to open the Details tab.

Exporting Events

Nexus Dashboard can host multiple services one or more of which can generate various events, faults, and alerts. This information is published on and stored using Apache Kafka. You can configure your cluster to export all platform-level, infrastructure-level, and service-level events to external monitoring and management systems. Each service running on Nexus Dashboard can define exactly which service-level events to aggregate and send to the cluster’s Kafka service to export.

When configuring event streaming, the following restrictions apply:

  • This release supports syslog event exporter only.

  • Events are stored for up to 4 hours by default.

  • The following events can be exported:

    • Node CPU exceeding threshold

    • Node storage exceeding threshold

    • Node memory exceeding threshold

    • Cluster node is unreachable

    • Cluster node is rebooted

    • All audit events

    • NTP is not synchronized

    • BGP peers are not reachable

To configure event exporting:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > System Settings.

  3. In the Syslog tile, click the Edit icon.

    In the Syslog dialog that opens, click +Add Remote Destinations to add a new server. Then provide the IP address, protocol, and port number for the server and choose whether you want to enable streaming to this syslog server at this time.

Cisco Intersight

Cisco Intersight is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) infrastructure management platform that is augmented by other intelligent systems. It provides global management of the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) and Cisco HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure, Cisco APIC, and other platforms including Nexus Dashboard.

Data center apps, such as Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights, connect to the Cisco Intersight portal through a Device Connector that is embedded in the management controller of each system, in this case your Nexus Dashboard platform. Device Connector provides a secure way for the connected devices to send information and receive control instructions from the Cisco Intersight portal, using a secure internet connection.

When an Intersight-enabled device or application starts, the Device Connector starts at boot by default and attempts to connect to the cloud service. If the Auto Update option is enabled, the Device Connector is automatically updated to the latest version through a refresh by the Intersight service when you connect to Cisco Intersight. For more information on the Auto Update option, see Configuring Device Connector Settings.

For additional information on Cisco Intersight, see https://www.intersight.com/help/saas/getting_started/overview.

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If you upgraded from Application Services Engine and your Intersight device connector is claimed with a proxy configured, you will need to re-configure the proxy in the Cluster Configuration screen. For more information, see System Settings.

Nexus Dashboard does not require additional licensing to claim Nexus Dashboard on Intersight.

The Intersight account used to claim Nexus Dashboard licence should also be registered with Smart Licensing. Please follow Cisco Intersight Help Center documentation for instructions on how to register Intersight with Cisco Smart Software Manager.

Intersight offers a free trial, which can be used to get started with claiming Nexus Dashboard on Intersight. For proper compliance, the Intersight account should be registered with Smart Licensing before the trial expires. Features specific to Nexus Dashboard Insights will continue to function even after the trial expires.

Configuring Device Connector Settings

Devices are connected to the Cisco Intersight portal through a Device Connector, which provides a secure way for the connected devices to send information and receive control instructions from the Cisco Intersight portal.

All device connectors must properly resolve svc.intersight.com and allow outbound initiated HTTPS connections on port 443. If a proxy is required for an HTTPS connection, you must configure the proxy settings in your Nexus Dashboard.

This section describes how to configure the basic Device Connector settings.

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > Intersight.

  3. In the top right of the main pane, click Settings.

  4. Click the General tab to configure basic options.

    1. Use the Device Connector knob to enable or disable the Device Connector.

      This enables you to claim the device and leverage the capabilities of Intersight. If it is disabled, no communication is allowed to Cisco Intersight.

    2. In the Access Mode area, choose whether to allow Intersight the capability to make changes to this device.

      • Allow Control (default) — enables you to perform full read or write operations from the cloud based on the features available in Cisco Intersight.

      • Read-only — ensures that no changes are made to this device from Cisco Intersight.

        For example, actions such as upgrading firmware or a profile deployment will not be allowed in read-only mode. However, the actions depend on the features available for a particular system.

    3. Use the Auto Update knob to enable automatic Device Connector updates.

      We recommend that you enable automatic updates so that the system automatically updates the Device Connector software. When enabled, the Device Connector will automatically upgrade its image whenever there is any upgrade push from Intersight.

      If you disable the automatic updates, you will be asked to manually update the software when new releases become available. Note that if the Device Connector is out-of-date, it may be unable to connect to Cisco Intersight.

  5. Click Save to save the changes.

  6. Click the Certificate Manager tab if you want to import additional certificates.

    By default, the device connector trusts only the built-in certificate. If the device connector establishes a TLS connection and a server sends a certificate that does not match the built-in certificate, the device connector terminates TLS connections because it cannot determine if the server is a trusted device.

    You can choose to upload additional certificates by clicking the Import button in this screen. The imported certificates must be in the .pem (base64 encoded) format. After a certificate is successfully imported, it is listed in the list of Trusted Certificates and if the certificate is correct, it is shown in the In-Use column.

    You can click the View icon at the end of the certificate’s row to view its details such as name, issue and expiration dates.

Target Claim

This section describes how to claim the Nexus Dashboard platform as a device for Cisco Intersight.

Before you begin

You must have configured the Intersight Device Connector as described in Configuring Device Connector Settings.

To claim the device:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > Intersight.

  3. Check whether the Device Connector is already configured.

    • If you see a green dotted line connecting Internet to Intersight in the Device Connector page and the text Claimed, then your Intersight Device Connector is already configured and connected to the Intersight cloud service, and the device is claimed. In this case, you can skip the rest of this section.

    • If you see a red dotted line connecting to Internet in the Device Connector page, you must configure a proxy for your Nexus Dashboard cluster to be able to access the Internet, as described in System Settings before continuing with the rest of this section.

    • If you see a yellow dotted line and a caution icon connecting Internet to Intersight in the Device Connector page and the text Not Claimed, then your Intersight Device Connector is not yet configured and connected to the Intersight service, and the device is not yet claimed. Follow these procedures to configure the Intersight Device Connector and connect to the Intersight cloud service, and claim the device. In this case, proceed with the rest of the steps to configure the device.

  4. If necessary, update the device connector software.

    If there is a new Device Connector software version available and you do not have the Auto Update option enabled, you will see a message at the top of the screen informing you that Device Connector has important updates available. Enabling the auto-update feature is described in Configuring Device Connector Settings.

    To manually update the Device Connector, click the Update Now link.

  5. Note down the Device ID and Claim Code listed on the Nexus Dashboard’s Intersight page.

  6. Log into the Cisco Intersight cloud site at https://www.intersight.com.

  7. Follow the instructions described in the Target Claim section of the Intersight documentation to claim the device.

    After the device is claimed in Intersight, you should see green dotted lines connecting Internet to Intersight in your Nexus Dashboard’s Device Connector page along with the text Claimed.

    note.svg

    You may need to click Refresh in top right of the page to update the latest status.

Unclaiming the Device

To unclaim the Nexus Dashboard as a device from Intersight:

  1. Navigate to your Nexus Dashboard’s Admin Console.

  2. From the main navigation menu, select Admin > Intersight.

  3. In the main pane, click Unclaim.

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First Published: 2024-03-01
Last Modified: 2024-03-01

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