Cisco FabricPath Lab
Cisco FabricPath Lab Michał Skiba Software Engineer Feedback: fabricpathlab@cisco.com Release 1.0 Cisco FabricPath Lab Cisco FabricPath Lab Michał Skiba Copyright 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review Printed in the United States of America First Printing March 2011 Warning and Disclaimer This book is designed to provide information about the Nexus Operating system and Nexus family of products Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied The information is provided on an “as is” basis The authors and Cisco Systems, Inc shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of the discs or programs that may accompany it The opinions expressed in this book belong to the author and are not necessarily those of Cisco Systems, Inc Trademark Acknowledgments All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized Cisco Systems, Inc cannot attest to the accuracy of this information Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark Feedback Information Our goal is to create in-depth technical books of the highest quality and value Each book is crafted with care and precision, undergoing rigorous development that involves the unique expertise of members from the professional technical community Readers’ feedback is a natural continuation of this process If you have any comments regarding how we could improve the quality of this book, or otherwise alter it to better suit your needs, you can contact us through email at: fabricpathlab@cisco.com We greatly appreciate your assistance Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at www.cisco.com/go/offices CCDE, CCENT, Cisco Eos, Cisco HealthPresence, the Cisco logo, Cisco Lumin, Cisco Nexus, Cisco StadiumVision, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco WebEx, DCE, and Welcome to the Human Network are trademarks; Changing the Way We Work, Live, Play, and Learn and Cisco Store are service marks; and Access Registrar, Aironet, AsyncOS, Bringing the Meeting To You, Catalyst, CCDA, CCDP, CCIE, CCIP, CCNA, CCNP, CCSP, CCVP, Cisco, the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert logo, Cisco IOS, Cisco Press, Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems Capital, the Cisco Systems logo, Cisco Unity, Collaboration Without Limitation, EtherFast, EtherSwitch, Event Center, Fast Step, Follow Me Browsing, FormShare, GigaDrive, HomeLink, Internet Quotient, IOS, iPhone, iQuick Study, IronPort, the IronPort logo, LightStream, Linksys, MediaTone, MeetingPlace, MeetingPlace Chime Sound, MGX, Networkers, Networking Academy, Network Registrar, PCNow, PIX, PowerPanels, ProConnect, ScriptShare, SenderBase, SMARTnet, Spectrum Expert, StackWise, The Fastest Way to Increase Your Internet Quotient, TransPath, WebEx, and the WebEx logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company (0812R) © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab Introduction The modern data center is rapidly changing and evolving to support the current and future demands of technology At the center of this change is the network—the single entity that connects everything and touches all components of the data center With that in mind, Cisco has launched a new series of switches, Nexus, based on a revolutionary new operating system, NX-OS, to meet these changes and provide a platform with the scalability, reliability, and comprehensive feature set required in the next generation data center Nexus 7000 The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series of modular switches is available in 10-slot and 18-slot configurations, and is capable of more than 15 terabits per second (Tbps) of switching capacity while offering market-leading Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet density Built on a zero-service-loss hardware and software architecture, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series offers the kind of high availability needed in a next-generation data center, in which virtualization increases the scope of downtime and Unified Fabric demands Fibre Channellike availability to properly support storage services With manageability in mind, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series incorporates a number of unique features, including integrated lights-out management and integrated packet capture and decoding The Cisco Nexus 7000 also offers innovative switch virtualization capabilities, which, in combination with the switch's density, allows customers to greatly simplify their switching infrastructure, reducing costs, power and cooling load, and management complexity © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab NX-OS The NX-OS data center-class operating system was built by Cisco with scalability, modularity, resiliency, and serviceability at its foundation NX-OS is based on the industry-proven Cisco Storage Area Network Operating System (SAN-OS) Software and helps ensure continuous availability to set the standard for mission-critical data center environments The self-healing and highly modular design of Cisco NX-OS enables excellent service levels and exceptional operational flexibility Lab Objectives This self-paced hands-on lab will introduce participants to Cisco FabricPath, a Layer-2 NXOS innovation FabricPath’s ease of provisioning, highly scalable east-west bandwidth and fast network convergence time allow administrators to provision very large layer-2 domains with confidence while maximizing interconnect bandwidth Cisco FabricPath enables this without the need for complex configurations By the end of this lab session participants should be able to understand Cisco FabricPath and vPC+ functionality and configuration with the Nexus 7000 & 5000 platforms Lab Procedure The Lab consists of multiple pods, each of which represents a simplified Nexus 7000 Data Center site Nexus 7010 switches are used as aggregation layer or spine devices The Nexus 5548 switch represents the access layer and attached to it are servers with VMware’s ESX hypervisor A group of two students is assigned to each pod, and each student will be configuring two Nexus 7000 devices The length of the lab will depend on the student’s level of experience with NX-OS, but should not last longer than two hours While the student has access to physical Nexus 7000 hardware, Virtual Device Contexts (VDCs) are used to consolidate multiple nodes and optimize the number of chassis and amount of power required The lab procedure has four main steps: NX-OS CLI familiarization by performing system verification, management VRF testing, and establishing basic connectivity (optional) Base configuration with the Spanning Tree Protocol Configuring Cisco FabricPath to establish active/active 4-way connections between Nexus 7000 devices Connecting edge devices to the FabricPath core with vPC+ General Disclaimer The content in this book is current as of the NX-OS 5.1(3) software release It is expected that the FabricPath feature set will grow over time The most up-to-date information regarding NXOS on Nexus 7000 can be found online at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9402/tsd_products_support_series_home.html © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab Feedback Our goal is to create in-depth technical lab procedures of the highest quality and value If you have any comments regarding how we could improve the quality of this document, or otherwise alter it to better suit your needs, you can contact us through email at fabricpathlab@cisco.com We greatly appreciate your input Acknowledgements This lab was implemented with support from the Cisco GOLD Lab Operations team members Liz Chen, Shane Hudson, Gernot Kindel and Divyaben Bhalani Extremely valuable support and feedback was provided by members of the Nexus 7000 marketing team; most notably Nikhil Kelshikar, Ben Basler, Tim Stevenson and Francois Tallet © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab Lab Topology and Access Catalyst 3750 N7K-TOP N7K-TOP N7K-BOTTOM N7K-BOTTOM vPC+ N5K STUDENT VM STUDENT A STUDENT VM STUDENT B The diagram above shows the complete connectivity that can be achieved within a pod By the end of this lab procedure, all links between Nexus 7000 switches, as well as the vPC+ connection to the Nexus 5000 switch, should be configured and operational All links between the Nexus 7000 switches will be connected with the Cisco FabricPath protocol, while the remainder will leverage the Spanning Tree Protocol Two students will be assigned to each pod, and each student will be configuring two different Nexus 7000 devices (N7K-TOP and N7K-BOTTOM) from their Windows 2003 Virtual Machine The Nexus 5548 (N5K) is shared amongst students and only needs to be configured by one of the students The Catalyst 3750 will not be accessible to students Future releases of this lab procedure will outline how to connect the Windows 2003 Virtual Machines, and the Catalyst 3750 switch © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab The pod topology can be thought of in terms of network layers, as shown in the diagram above The Nexus 5548 acts as an access layer switch in this topology The aggregation and core layers are built on Nexus 7010 (10-slot) chassis, each running NX-OS version 5.1(3) Each chassis has an F1 I/O module (32-port 10GE fiber module, model N7K-F132XP-15) installed These modules will be used to create parallel 4-way Cisco FabricPath connections to each Nexus 7010 switch within the aggregation and core layers N7K-BOTTOM, the aggregation layer chassis facing the access layer, have an additional F1 module installed in order to provide connectivity to the Nexus 5548 switch N7K-TOP, the chassis facing the Layer network core, have an M1 I/O module (48-port Gigabit Ethernet Copper module, model N7K-M148GT-11) installed, which supports Layer routing protocols The Layer network is abstracted by the Catalyst 3750 © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab While the student has access to physical Nexus 7000 hardware, Virtual Device Contexts (VDCs) are used to consolidate multiple nodes and optimize the number of chassis and amount of power required Only the interfaces that are necessary for achieving the previously described connectivity have been assigned to the VDCs Following table maps the N7K-TOP and N7K-BOTTOM shorthand designations to the names of the actual VDCs that students will be configuring: POD # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Student # A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B N7K-TOP N7K-1-POD-1 N7K-2-POD-1 N7K-1-POD-2 N7K-2-POD-2 N7K-1-POD-3 N7K-2-POD-3 N7K-1-POD-4 N7K-2-POD-4 N7K-5-POD-5 N7K-6-POD-5 N7K-5-POD-6 N7K-6-POD-6 N7K-5-POD-7 N7K-6-POD-7 N7K-5-POD-8 N7K-6-POD-8 N7K-BOTTOM N7K-3-POD-1 N7K-4-POD-1 N7K-3-POD-2 N7K-4-POD-2 N7K-3-POD-3 N7K-4-POD-3 N7K-3-POD-4 N7K-4-POD-4 N7K-7-POD-5 N7K-8-POD-5 N7K-7-POD-6 N7K-8-POD-6 N7K-7-POD-7 N7K-8-POD-7 N7K-7-POD-8 N7K-8-POD-8 Lab Access This Lab is accessible through the Cisco Global On-line Learning Distribution (GOLD) infrastructure, which provides students with the ability to learn about Cisco products and solutions through a convenient, convincing and hands-on approach In this lab, you will have the opportunity to gain the invaluable experience of configuring physical hardware in the topology that is reflective of a realistic deployment Each FabricPath GOLD lab is a scheduled session for which you will need to register Following registration, you will obtain a session timeslot and class name At the start time of your session, you will need to access the GOLD Labs student portal and provide your email and class name the portal can be found at: https://labops-out.cisco.com/labops/ilt/ Note: If you are using the GOLD lab for the first time, then you need to register prior logging in This is a one-time process and can be initiated by clicking on “REGISTER” under the above URL Once registered, you will be redirected back to this page and can proceed to log in with your email address and class name © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab Following a successful login, you will find a table listing the FabricPath Lab pods As explained in the previous section, each pod is the topology that you will be configuring along with a partner If your partner has already registered with the pod, then their name will be displayed next to the pod number To enter the pod, click on the “pick” link © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved of 39 Cisco FabricPath Lab Important: If you find yourself without a partner, then you will need to configure both sides of the pod by yourself Having entered the pod, you will see a frame within your browser window with four tabs: Toplogy, Overview, Instructions and Help This manual is found under the instructions tab, while under the topology tab you will find a wiring diagram for this lab No interfaces have been labeled on the diagram since it is a generic diagram for all pods in this lab infrastructure The Nexus 7010 & 5548 switches are accessible through the Windows 2003 Virtual Machines that are associated with each pod These machines can be accessed with a client that supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Users with the Apple OS-X operating system can download the Microsoft RDP client from: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/remote-desktop-client The connection can be initiated by clicking on the laptop icon in the topology, which is located at the bottom on the diagram A shortcut to the RDP connection will begin to download, and you should chose to open it with your RDP client The login credentials are: Login student Password Nbv_12345 © 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved 10 of 39 ... www .cisco. com/go/offices CCDE, CCENT, Cisco Eos, Cisco HealthPresence, the Cisco logo, Cisco Lumin, Cisco Nexus, Cisco StadiumVision, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco WebEx, DCE, and Welcome to the Human.. .Cisco FabricPath Lab Cisco FabricPath Lab Michał Skiba Copyright 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc All rights reserved No part of this book... the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert logo, Cisco IOS, Cisco Press, Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems Capital, the Cisco Systems logo, Cisco Unity, Collaboration Without Limitation, EtherFast, EtherSwitch,