Introduction
Cisco Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (Cisco NFVI) provides the virtual layer and hardware environment in which virtual network functions (VNFs) operate. VNFs provide a well-defined network function that offers routing, intrusion, detection, domain name service (DNS), caching, Network Address Translation (NAT), and other network functions. While this network functions required a tight integration between a network software and hardware in the past, VNFs decouple software from the underlying hardware.
Cisco NFVI is based on the Newton release of OpenStack, an open source cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources. The Cisco version of OpenStack is Cisco Virtualization Infrastructure Manager (VIM). VIM manages the OpenStack compute, network, and storage services, and all Cisco NFVI build and control functions. Cisco NFVI pods perform four key roles:
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Control (including Networking)
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Computes
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Storage
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Management, logging, and monitoring
Hardware that is used to create the Cisco NFVI pods include:
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Cisco UCS® C240 M4—Performs management and storage functions, and services. Includes dedicated Ceph (UCS 240-M4) distributed object store and the file system. (Only Red Hat Ceph is supported).
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Cisco UCS C220/240 M4—Performs control and compute services.
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HP DL 360 Gen9: Supports as a third-party Compute, where the control plane is still Cisco UCS servers.
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Cisco UCS B200 M4 blades—It can be used instead of the UCS C220 for compute and control services. The B200 blades and C240 Ceph server are joined with redundant Cisco Fabric Interconnects that are managed by UCS Manager.
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Combination of M5 series servers are supported in M5 based micro-pod, VIC/NIC (40G) based Hyper-converged and Micro-pod offering.
The UCS C240 and C220 servers are M4 Small Form Factor (SFF) models where the operating systems boots from HDD for control nodes, from HDD/SSD for compute nodes, and from internal SSD for Ceph nodes. Each UCS C240, C220, and B200 have two 10 GE Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards.
Software applications that manage Cisco NFVI hosts and services include:
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 with OpenStack Platform 10.0-Provides the core operating system with OpenStack capability. RHEL 7.4 and OSP 10.0 are installed on all Cisco NFVI UCS servers.
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Cisco Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM)—An OpenStack orchestration system that helps to deploy and manage an OpenStack cloud offering from bare metal installation to OpenStack services, considering the hardware and software redundancy, security, and monitoring. Cisco VIM includes the OpenStack Newton release with more features and usability enhancements that are tested for functionality, scale, and performance.
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Cisco Unified Management/Insight—Deploys, Provisions, and manages CiscoVIM on Cisco UCS servers.
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Cisco UCS Manager—Used to perform certain management functions when UCS B200 blades are installed.
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Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC)—When installing Cisco VIM 2.4, Cisco IMC 2.0(13i) or later is supported.
For the Cisco IMC 2.0 lineup, the recommended version information is as follows:
UCS-M4 servers
Recommended: Cisco IMC 2.0(13n) or later.
For the Cisco IMC 3.x lineup, the recommended version information is as follows:
UCS-M4 servers
Cisco IMC versions are 3.0(3a) or later, except for 3.0(4a); Recommended: Cisco IMC 3.0(4d).
UCS-M5 servers
CIMC 3.1(2b) or later.
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Cisco Virtual Topology System (VTS)— VTS is a standard-based, open, overlay management and provisioning system for data center networks. It automates DC overlay fabric provisioning for physical and virtual workloads.
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Cisco Virtual Topology Forwarder (VTF)—Includes VTS, VTF leverages Vector Packet Processing (VPP) to provide high performance Layer 2 and Layer 3 VXLAN packet forwarding.
Layer 2 networking protocols include:
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VxLAN supported using Linux Bridge
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VTS VLAN supported using ML2/VPP
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VLAN supported using OpenVSwitch (OVS) & ML2/VPP (including SRIOV with Intel NIC 710 NIC)
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VLAN supported using ML2/ACI
For pods that are based on UCS B-Series pods, and pods based on C-series with Intel NIC Single Root I/O Virtualization (SRIOV). SRIOV allows a single physical PCI Express to be shared on a different virtual environment. The SRIOV offers different virtual functions to different virtual components, for example, network adapters, on a physical server.
Any connection protocol can be used unless you install UCS B200 blades with the UCS Manager plugin, in which case, only OVS over VLAN can be used.
Features of Cisco VIM 2.4.1
Cisco VIM is the only standalone fully automated cloud lifecycle manager offering from Cisco for the private cloud. The current version of VIM, integrates with Cisco C or B-series UCS servers and Cisco or Intel NIC. This document and its accompanying administrator guide help the cloud administrators to set up and manage the private cloud.
The following are the features of Cisco VIM:
Feature Name |
Comments |
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OpenStack Version |
RHEL 7.4 with OSP 10 (Newton) |
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Hardware Support Matrix |
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NIC support |
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POD Type |
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ToR and FI support |
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IPV6 Support for Management Network |
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Mechanism Drivers |
OVS/VLAN, Linuxbridge/VXLAN, ACI/VLAN, VPP/VLAN (Fast Networking, Fast Data FD.io > VPP/VLAN, based on the FD.io VPP fast virtual switch).
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SDN Controller Integration |
VTS; ACI (ships in the night or with Unified ACI Plugin). with Cisco VIC or Intel NIC on the UCS C-series M4 platform. |
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Install Methodology |
Fully automated online or offline. |
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Scale |
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Automated Pod Life Cycle Management |
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Platform security |
Secure OS, RBAC, Network isolation, TLS, Source IP filtering, Keystone v3, Bandit, CSDL-compliant, hardened OS, SELinux. Change the CIMC password after post install for maintenance and security. Non-root log in for Administrators. Enabling Custom Policy for VNF Manager. |
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EPA |
NUMA, CPU pinning, huge pages, SRIOV with Intel NIC. |
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HA and Reliability |
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Unified Management Support |
Single pane of glass in a single or multi instance (HA) mode: Supports multi-tenancy and manages multiple pods from one instance. |
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Central Logging |
ELK integrated with external syslog (over v4 or v6) for a log offload, with optional support of NFS with ELK snapshot. |
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External Syslog Servers |
Support of multiple external syslog servers over IPv4 or IPv6. The minimum and maximum number of external syslog server that is supported is 1 and 3, respectively. |
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VM Migration |
Cold migration and resizing. Live Migration |
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Storage |
Object store with SwiftStack, Block storage with Ceph or Netapp. |
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Monitoring |
Third-party integration with Zenoss (called NFVIMON). |
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Support of External Auth System |
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Software Update |
Update of Cloud Software for bug fixes on the same release. |
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Power Management of Computes |
Option to power off or on computes selectively to conserve energy. |
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Disk maintenance for Pod Nodes |
Ability to replace faulty disk(s) on the Pod node(s) without the need for add/remove/replace node operation. |
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Integrated Test Tools |
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Known Caveats
The following list describes the known caveats in NFVI 2.4.1
- CSCve39684
- Translation of vic_slot 7 to MLOM fails in CIMC 2.0(13i) version.
- CSCva37451
- Traffic loss of 8-10s seen while controller with active l3 reboots.
- CSCva36943
- Volume attach failure errors has to be reported to the user.
- CSCva36914
- After a MariaDB HA event, you should run the recovery playbook.
- CSCva36907
- Nova compute reports goes down for up to two minutes after a controller reboot.
- CSCva36782
- Nova HA: VM is stuck in scheduling state after Nova conductor HA.
- CSCva32195
- Auto-created L3 network not cleaned up with the router/tenant deletion.
- CSCva32312
- Update fails if compute is not reachable even after updating the containers on the controller node.
- CSCva34476
- Nova api is unavailable for few minutes once the controller is down.
- CSCva32193
- The ARP entry on ToR does not refresh resulting in an external ping to VM VIP failure.
- CSCva57121
- The Ceph cluster does not move to Error state when all storage nodes are down.
- CSCva66093
- Rollback not supported for repo update failure.
- CSCvf81055
- VMs goes to 'SHUTOFF' state intermittently on compute node reboot.
- CSCve13042
- Recovery play book needs to handle ceph recovery after power outage.
- CSCve76157
- Performance Issue on IE browser.
- CSCvf74264
- Insight UI: The pod users cannot update the restapi password once it is changed.
- CSCvf86622
- When using MECHANISM_DRIVER, aci which is the command-line interfaces for neutron quota-update do not get enforced.
- CSCvf86623
- When using MECHANISM_DRIVER: aci and VMs originally in an ACTIVE state on the rebote compute node are unable to acquire an ip address from DHCP.
- CSCvi64002
- [NCS/CVIM] BGP NCS Peer Configuration Not Applied when BGP sessions exist
- CSCvi98399
- Representation of Service type cloud-formation in Openstack endpoint needs to be changed.
Using the Cisco Bug Search Tool
You can use the Bug Search Tool to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release.
Procedure
Step 1 |
Go to the Cisco Bug Search Tool. |
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Step 2 |
In the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password, and then click Log In. The Bug Search page opens.
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Step 3 |
To search for a specific bug, enter the bug ID in the Search For field and press Enter. |
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Step 4 |
To search for bugs in the current release: |
Related Documentation
The Cisco NFVI 2.4.1 documentation set consists of:
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Cisco NFV Infrastructure Installation Guide
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Cisco NFV Infrastructure Administrator Guide
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Cisco NFV Infrastructure Release Notes
These documents are available on cisco.com.
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html
Subscribe to the What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation as an RSS feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service. Cisco currently supports RSS Version 2.0.
External References
NFVI documentation is now available on Cisco.com.
Here are the documentation links:
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Release Note:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/network_function_virtualization_Infrastructure/2_4_1/Cisco_VIM_Release_Notes_2_4_1.html -
Installation Guide:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/network_function_virtualization_Infrastructure/2_4_1/Cisco_VIM_Install_Guide_2_4_1.html -
Administration Guide:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/network_function_virtualization_Infrastructure/2_4_1/Cisco_VIM_Admin_Guide_2_4_1.html