Cisco Nexus Dashboard FAQ

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a unified automation platform that provides unprecedented simplicity by integrating operational services to manage customers’ on-premises, cloud, and hybrid data-center networks through a single pane of glass. Using the Cisco Nexus Dashboard, IT operations teams can navigate seamlessly all aspects of infrastructure lifecycle tasks from initial configuration and capacity planning to running and troubleshooting the entire IT infrastructure by leveraging Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (formerly Nexus Insights) and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (formerly Cisco Multi-Site Orchestrator), Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (formerly Nexus Data Broker) and third-party applications for your mission-critical multicloud data center environment.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (formerly Cisco Multi-Site Orchestrator) provides the visibility and connectivity to different fabric controllers and unifies them into one single orchestrator, ensuring that consistent intent-based policies are provisioned properly. You can now achieve visibility, inter-site connectivity and site-wide configuration of multiple fabrics through one pane of glass while leveraging the distributed scale-out model of Cisco ^® Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and Cisco NX-OS with Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) controllers for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (formerly Nexus Insights) is an application that gives customers the ability to monitor, analyze, troubleshoot and assure their networks in real time. It helps identify anomalies, provide root-cause analysis, plan capacity, manage change, and accelerate troubleshooting. By tracking historical context, collecting and processing hardware and software telemetry data, and correlating customer designs with Cisco best practices, customers can get excellent visibility and awareness of issues affecting their environment and take corrective actions.

It also includes network assurance capabilities that were formerly provided by the Cisco Network Assurance Engine (NAE) to enable customers to continuously analyze and verify that their network state is consistent with intent. Customers can ensure that network policies are compliant with business rules, validate network changes before deploying them, and determine network impact due to changes between any two points in time. You can perform natural language queries to gain in-depth connectivity knowledge of their network, of what policies enable which network elements, and of the relationships between communication and virtual resources in real time.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (formerly Nexus Data Broker), is now a part of Cisco Nexus Dashboard, enabling NetOps to programmatically manage aggregating, filtering, and forwarding complete flows to custom analytics tools.

A.  The new Cisco Nexus Dashboard unleashes a unified experience and automation workflows by standardizing on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform (physical/virtual/cloud). Customers can now standardize operations’ processes on a single platform and teams can use advanced visibility, monitoring, orchestration and deployment services from a unified pane of glass. The Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform can be deployed across the hybrid cloud infrastructure in the form factor of your choosing (physical/virtual or cloud). The Nexus Dashboard platform is extensible. The Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform integrates with third-party services such as ServiceNow and Splunk and also provides the central point for cross-domain integrations.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker . Nexus Dashboard now includes Cisco NX-OS with Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (formerly Cisco Data Center Network Manager, or Cisco DCNM) and supports Cisco ACI^®, and Cisco Cloud ACI sites. Refer to the compatibility matrix. For more details, refer to the data sheet.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a unified automation platform that comprises a host of best-in-class capabilities to empower modern operations teams. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights is one such service that provides visibility and real-time insights into the operating state of the infrastructure.

A.  Cisco NX-OS with Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) - formerly Cisco Data Center Network Manager (Cisco DCNM) – is available as a service on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (formerly Cisco DCNM) will also be a service on Nexus Dashboard. NDFC will leverage the Nexus Dashboard to offer streamlined data center network automation, control, and management for Cisco NX-OS, IP Fabric for Media, and storage networking deployments.

A.  Onboard and manage multicloud environments, along with on-premises sites, with site onboarding for Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is now available on AWS and Azure marketplaces.

A.  Cisco Nexus Cloud is a separate product. Our customers now have the flexibility of choice to use Cisco Nexus Cloud (delivered as a service) and/or Cisco Nexus Dashboard (delivered as a product) to operate their on-premises and cloud-networking infrastructure.

A.  The applications hosted on Cisco Nexus Dashboard require their own licenses. For example, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator requires a Cisco Data Center Networking (DCN) Advantage device license, and the Nexus Dashboard Insights application requires a Cisco DCN Premier device license or Day 2 Operations (Day2OPS) device license bundle. Cisco Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights are provided as part of Cisco DCN Premier device license or Day2OPS device license bundle. Please refer to the ordering guide.

A.  The new PID ND-CLUSTER-L4 is based on the Cisco UCS ^® M6 server. Please continue to use PID SE-CL-L3 (3-node compute cluster) based on the Cisco UCS M5 server. Additional nodes can be purchased through the PID ND-NODE-L4= (Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform node based on the Cisco UCS M6 server) and PID SE-NODE-G2= (Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform node based on the Cisco UCS M5 server). The new generation of the platforms and PIDs are backward compatible. And virtual form factors of Cisco Nexus Dashboard (OVA, KVM) may be purchased through ND-VIRTUAL. Please refer to the ordering guide.

A.  The Cisco Application Service Engine can be converted to the Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform through a simple software upgrade. The investment in the Service Engine cluster is therefore protected.

A.  The virtual Nexus Dashboard PID “ND-VIRTUAL” is $0 cost. It does not require any additional license. You need to add the relevant service/support PID to receive technical support, which may require a purchase.

A.  Please refer to the ordering guide.

A.  Please refer to our promotions page on the latest offers

A.  Refer to the Cisco Data Center Networking Applications Compatibility Matrix.

A.  Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform is built on scale-out architecture, which means you can add more nodes if you require additional resources. Please refer to the Nexus Dashboard sizing calculator to determine the cluster size.

A.  When hosting Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights on Cisco Nexus Dashboard, Cisco Nexus Dashboard needs to be connected to Cisco Intersight ^™ periodically in order for Nexus Dashboard Insights to access the latest Cisco database of known defects, field notices, and PSIRTs. Nexus Dashboard Insights can then run bug scans against the latest database. Offline customers can utilize Insight’s “Advisory” features to better identify risks to their infrastructure (PSIRTS, defects, EoX notices, and field notices).

A.  Refer to the design and deployment guide for recommendations.