Overview and Initial Setup of Cisco NDFC: LAN, Release 12.2.1

Overview

From the left menu bar, choose Dashboard > Overview. The Overview window displays the default dashlets. The dashlets display donuts summary.

The following are the default dashlets that appear in the Overview dashboard window:

Dashlet	Description
Fabric Health	Displays the fabric health summary of problems, and number in the donut depicting total number of fabrics. Displays fabric health status with Critical, and Healthy. The Fabric Health status is based on the severity of the highest outstanding alarm for the fabric or its member switches.
Events Analytics	Displays events with Critical, Error, and Warning severity.
Switches Configuration	Displays the switches inventory summary information such as the switch models and the corresponding count.
Switches
Switch Health	Displays the switches health summary Critical, and Healthy with the corresponding count. The Switch Health status is based on the severity of the highest outstanding alarm for the switch or its interfaces.
Switch Roles	Displays the switches roles summary and the corresponding count. Displays the number of access, spine and leaf devices.
Switch Hardware Version	Displays the switches models and the corresponding count.
Switch Software Version	Displays the switches software version and the corresponding count.
Performance Collector	Displays the performance collections on the switch.
Reports	Displays switch reports.

Viewing vCenter VMs

vCenter VMs UI Path: Dashboard > vCenter VMs

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You can view the Virtual Machine details for the added vCenter cluster in the dashboard and topology window by navigating to Dashboard > vCenter VMs.

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The vCenter VMs tab displays the following details of VMs:

You can search and filter VMs by using the Filter by attributes search field.

Viewing Kubernetes Pods

Kubernetes Pods UI Path: Dashboard > Kubernetes Pods

You can view Kubernetes pods on Fabrics window, navigate LAN > Fabrics, double-click on required fabric, it navigates to Fabric Overview window, click Virtual Infrastructure > Kubernetes Pods.

You can view Kubernetes pods on Switch window, navigate LAN > Switches, double-click on required switch, it navigates to Switch Overview window, click Virtual Infrastructure > Kubernetes Pods.

You can search and filter kubernetes pods by using filter by attributes search field.

The following table describes the fields and description on the window.

Field	Description
Pod Name	Specifies the name of the Kubernetes pod.
Pod IP	Displays the IP address of the Kubernetes pod.
Phase	Specifies the phase (state) of the pod.
Reason	Specifies the reason.
Applications	Specifies the applications of the pod.
Namespace	Specifies the namespace of the pod.
Node Name	Specifies the node name of the pod.
Node IP	Specifies the node IP address.
Cluster Type	Displays the type of cluster.
Physical NIC	Displays the physical NIC of the node.
Physical Switch	Specifies the physical switch connected to cluster node.
Switch Interface	Specifies the switch interface connected to cluster node.
Cluster Name	Specifies the name of the cluster.
Port Channel	Specifies the port channel (if cluster node is connected to a VPC).
VLAN	Specifies the VLAN.
Fabric	Specifies the fabric name.

Endpoint Locator Dashboard

To explore endpoint locator details from the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Web UI, choose Dashboard > Endpoint Locator. The Endpoint Locator dashboard is displayed.

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Due to an increase in scale, the system may take some time to collect endpoint data and display it on the dashboard. On bulk addition or removal of endpoints, the endpoint information displayed on the EPL dashboard takes a few minutes to refresh and display the latest endpoint data.

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The top pane of the window displays the following information:

The top pane of the window displays the number of active endpoints, active VRFs, active networks, dual attached endpoints, single attached endpoints and dual stacked endpoints, for the selected scope. Support for displaying the number of dual attached endpoints, single attached endpoints and dual stacked endpoints has been added. A dual attached endpoint is an endpoint that is behind at least two switches. A dual stacked endpoint is an endpoint that has at least one IPv4 address and one IPv6 address.

The 'middle pane' of the window displays the following information:

The 'bottom pane' of the window displays the list of active endpoints.

If a virtual machine has been configured, the name of the VM is displayed in the Node Name field. Note that it can take up to 15 minutes for the name of the VM to be reflected in the EPL dashboard. Until then, the EPL dashboard displays No DATA in the Node Name field.

Click Export to download the list of active endpoints in .csv format.

Click on required endpoint identifier, a slide-in pane appears and the related details are displayed. Click Endpoint Life. The Endpoint Life window appears for selected endpoint identifier. For more information, refer to Endpoint Life.

Click the search icon in the Endpoint Identifier column to search for specific IP addresses.

Consider a scenario in which EPL is first enabled and the Process MAC-Only Advertisements checkbox is selected. Then, EPL is disabled and enabled again without selecting the Process MAC-Only Advertisements checkbox. As the cache data in elasticsearch is not deleted on disabling of EPL, the MAC endpoint information is still displayed in the EPL dashboard. The same behavior is observed when a Route-Reflector is disconnected. Depending on the scale, the endpoints are deleted from the EPL dashboard after some time. In certain cases, it may take up to 30 minutes to remove the older MAC-only endpoints. However, to display the latest endpoint data, you can click Resync.

Searching Topology

Use a combination of search attributes and search criteria in the search bar for an effective search. As you enter a combination of search attribute and search criteria in the search bar, the corresponding devices are highlighted in the topology.

You can apply the search criteria such as equals (=), does not equal (!=), contains (contains), and does not contain (!contains).

The search attributes that you can use for LAN fabrics are ASN, Fabric Type, Fabric Name, and Fabric technology. The fabric type attributes that you can use for search include switch fabric, multi-fabric domain, external, and LAN monitor. The fabric technology attributes that you can use for search include fabricpath fabric, VXLAN fabric, VLAN fabric, external, LAN classic, IPFM classic, IPFM fabric, switch group, multi-fabric domain, eBGP VXLAN fabric, eBGP routed fabric, MSO site group, meta fabric, LAN monitor fabric, and IOS-XE VXLAN fabric.

For IPFM fabrics, the following fields are available to search on: switch or hostname, switch or host IP address, switch MAC, and switch serial number. In the Generic Multicast mode, also, you can search the receiver-interface name or IP addresses in this window.

When a device is displayed on the topology, double-click it to navigate further into the topology. For example, when the fabric that you searched is displayed on the topology, double-click on the fabric (cloud icon) to navigate inside its topology. Furthermore, after the fabric is displayed on the topology, you can continue to search based on a combination of a criteria and various search attributes such as VPC peer, IP address, model, mode, switch, switch role, discovery status, software version, up time, and serial.

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Certain levels of the topology allow filters only, that is, filters take the place of Search. The topology listing for these levels display a limited number of entities. For example, Easy Fabric Networks are limited to 50 networks shown. Filters must be used to see additional elements or entities.

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Viewing Topology

To pan, click and hold anywhere in the whitespace and drag the cursor up, down, left, or right. To drag switches, click, hold, and move the cursor around the whitespace region of the topology.

In case of multiple selection of switch, you must release the modifier keys (cmd/ctrl) before releasing mouse drag to end the switch selection.

You can view the following information of the devices and links in the View pane:

Topology for a node is displayed at multiple scope. Each scope is shown in the hierarchical order. The scope hierarchy is shown as breadcrumbs and can be navigated to required scope. Scopes are as follows:

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In the Topology window, FEX appears in gray (Unknown or NA) because Operation and Configuration status is not calculated for FEX.

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After moving a cable from one port to another port, the old fabric link is retained in the Topology window, and it is shown in the red color indicating that the link is down. Right-click on the link and delete it if the removal was intentional. A manual Rediscover of the switch will also delete and re-learn all links to that switch.

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When a Multi-Site Domain (MSD) fabric is deployed with the child fabrics, to view multi-site topology, double-click on a fabric node, and then choose MSD scope or double click on the gray MSD node to view the MSD topology.

Server Settings

You can set the parameters that are populated as default values.

To set the parameters of the Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller server from the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Web UI, perform the following steps:

Each microservice of an enabled feature has additional tabs and properties other than those listed below.

Each field has a short description. If there is an error when configuring any of the features in Server Settings, the corresponding tab displays in red. The Save button is disabled until you resolve those errors.

NDFC services perform comprehensive checks on the NDFC server. If there are any errors, those errors are displayed on the NDFC UI.

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Choosing Feature Set

When you launch Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller 12 for the first time, none of the feature set is enabled. During this state, you can perform Backup and Restore to restore the DCNM 11.5(x) data on Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller 12. Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller will read the data from the backup file and select the installer type accordingly.

To deploy feature-set from Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Web UI perform the following steps:

Changing across Feature-Set

Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller 12 allows you to switch from one feature set to another. Choose Admin > System Settings > Feature Management. Select the desired feature set and applications in the table below. Click Save & Continue. Refresh the browser to begin using Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller with the new feature set and applications.

There are a few features/applications supported with specific deployments. When you change the feature set, some of these features are not supported in the new deployment. The following table provides details about the pre-requisites and criteria based on which you can change the feature set.

Table 2. Supported Switching between deployments

From/To	Fabric Discovery	Fabric Controller	SAN Controller
Fabric Discovery	-	Only monitor mode fabric is supported in Fabric Discovery deployment. When you change the feature set, the fabric can be used in the Fabric Controller deployment.	Not supported
Fabric Controller	You must delete the existing fabrics before changing the fabric set.	If you’re changing from Easy Fabric to IPFM fabric application, you must delete the exiting fabrics.	Not supported
SAN Controller	Not supported	Not supported	-

LAN Credentials

You can use the write option on the LAN credentials page to do configuration changes on the switch. One credential is allowed per user for a single switch. A user role must access NDFC to use the write option for the switches to push configurations on it through an SSH connection.

For a user role created on NX-OS switches, an SNMPv3 user is created with the same password. Ensure that the SSH and SNMPv3 credentials match for the discovery of the credentials. If SNMP authentication fails, discovery of credentials stops displaying an error message. If SNMP authentication succeeds and SSH authentication fails, discovery of credentials continues, and the switch status displays a warning message for the SSH error.

If the user role created on the NX-OS switches uses AAA authentication, the SNMPv3 user is not created. Using this AAA authentication to discover or import a switch in NDFC, the controller detects that the local SNMPv3 user is not created on the switch. NDFC runs the exec command on the switch to create an SNMPv3 user with the same password on the switch. The SNMPv3 user role is temporary. Once the user role expires, the continual discovery of switches from NDFC creates the SNMPv3 user.

LAN credentials management allows you to specify configuration-change credentials. Before changing any LAN switch configuration, you must enter the LAN credentials for the switch. If you do not provide the credentials, the configuration change action is rejected.

These features get the device-write credentials from the LAN credentials feature.

You must specify the configuration-change credentials irrespective of whether the devices were discovered initially or not. This is a one-time operation. After the credentials are set, the credentials are used for any configuration-change operation.

Default Credentials

You use default credentials to connect all the devices that the user has access to. You can override the default credentials by specifying credentials for each of the devices in the Devices table.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller tries to use individual switch credentials in the devices, to begin with. If the credentials (username/password) columns are empty in the devices, the default credentials are used.

Switch Table

The Devices table lists all the LAN switches that the user has access to. You can specify the switch credentials individually, which will override the default credentials. In most cases, you need to provide only the default credentials.

The LAN credentials for the Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Devices table has the following fields.

Field	Description
Device Name	Displays the switch name.
IP Address	Specifies the IP address of the switch.
Credentials	Specifies whether the default or switch-specific custom credentials are used.
Username	Specifies the username that Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller uses to login.
Fabric	Displays the fabric to which the switch belongs.

The following table describes the action items, in the Actions menu drop-down list, that appear on the LAN Credentials Management page.

Action Item	Description
Edit	Choose a device name and click Edit. Specify a username and password. You can edit local or custom- specific credentials.
Clear	Choose a device name and click Clear. A confirmation dialog box appears. Click Yes to clear the switch credentials from the NDFC server.
Validate	Choose a device name and click Validate. A confirmation message appears, indicating if the operation was successful or a failure.

Robot Credentials

When you specify default credentials, you can enable the robot feature, enabling the robot flag.

The robot role is similar to an earlier role in DCNM. The robot user role helps with switch and device accounting. You can track all the changes done on NDFC with a general user account. If the user role changes on NDFC that impacts the change on the device, this is termed an out-of-band change. These changes are logged on the device as the changes made by a general user account. Therefore, you can track and distinguish between out-of-band changes and changes made on the device. This general user account is termed as a robot user role for the changes logged on the device.

For example, a user role of network-admin on NDFC has access to enter LAN device credentials to push configurations on the switches. With the network-admin user role, you can check the robot flag while creating the LAN credentials.

The username for the LAN credentials is displayed as a change logged on the device. If a username for the LAN credentials is changed to a controller and the robot flag is checked, the credentials for the device changes from default to robot. This user role pushes configurations on the switches in NDFC. These changes are logged in the History tab of the fabric as the changes made by the network-admin user role. The account log on the switch displays as the controller. The appropriate user-role details are logged on NDFC and the device.

In NDFC, the robot user role is considered the admin role for all the fabrics and the devices. If the default credential is not set on a fabric, you can use the robot user role, if it is set for different devices. If another user role with write access logs in to NDFC, this user role is not prompted to update the credentials as the robot user role is already set. The credentials are set in the following order: individual switch, robot, and then the default credentials.

On the Admin > Switch Credentials > LAN Credentials Management page, you can choose to either use default credentials or robot credentials while changing device configurations, unless you set custom credentials.

To set the default credentials, perform the following steps: