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Data Center Networking
Cisco ACI and Day 2 Operations Briefing with Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI)
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI) is included with all Nexus licensing and is compatible with both ACI and NDFC. The platform offers extensive insights functionality, such as dynamic correlation, impact analysis, proactive alerts, failure prediction, and remediation. By leveraging advanced alerting, baselining, correlation, and forecasting algorithms, NDI provides deep insights into network behavior through telemetry data from networking components. This accelerates troubleshooting, rapid root-cause analysis, and early remediation, ensuring compliance with operator intent and simplifying audits. Additionally, it supports multi-site environments, enabling effective monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting across multiple data center sites. Overall, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights enhances network visibility, optimizes performance, and ensures a more reliable and efficient data center operation. This briefing will introduce you to the Nexus Dashboard platform and demonstrate the benefits of NDI.
Briefing
Data Center Networking
Data Center Network Modernization Briefing
The Data Center Network (DCN) is essential for supporting high-performance workloads, including Artificial Intelligence (AI). This briefing will explore next-generation data center architectures, highlighting the advantages of using an underlay/overlay topology and controller-based management. As DCN architectures become more complex, day-two operations software becomes increasingly necessary. This session will provide an overview of DCN hardware, architectures, and day-two operations, along with a brief introduction to the most commonly seen DCN OEMs in enterprise data centers.
Briefing
Data Center Networking
Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) Briefing
The most common protocols used in a modern Data Center Network (DCN) are EVPN/VXLAN, while there are many benefits to this underlay/overlay technology, it is extremely complex to implement. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) can streamline the process for EVPN/VXLAN campus or DCN networks as well as traditional networks. The platform's user-friendly interface and streamlined workflows simplify the process of fabric management, from initial setup to ongoing maintenance. NDFC supports both greenfield and brownfield deployments, allowing for seamless integration with existing fabrics as well as the creation of new ones. By providing a centralized point of control, NDFC reduces the complexity associated with managing multiple fabrics and sites, ensuring that network operations are efficient and straightforward.
Briefing
Data Center Networking
Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI) Briefing
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI) is included with all Nexus licensing and is compatible with both ACI and NDFC. The platform offers extensive insights functionality, such as dynamic correlation, impact analysis, proactive alerts, failure prediction and remediation. By leveraging advanced alerting, baselining, correlation, and forecasting algorithms, NDI provides deep insights into network behavior through telemetry data from networking components. This accelerates troubleshooting, rapid root-cause analysis, and early remediation, ensuring compliance with operator intent and simplifying audits. Additionally, it supports multi-site environments, enabling effective monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting across multiple data center sites. Overall, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights enhances network visibility, optimizes performance, and ensures a more reliable and efficient data center operation. This briefing will introduce you to the Nexus Dashboard platform and demonstrate the benefits of NDI.
Briefing
Data Center Networking
Exploring Cisco NEXUS Dashboard
Cisco has been at the forefront of developing a suite of standalone tools for data center networking, collectively known as the Day 2 Operations Suite. Recently, Cisco has initiated the integration of these tools into a unified interface called NEXUS Dashboard, providing a consolidated view and shared data repositories for enhanced application correlation. This Learning path is designed specifically for those new to networking or new to the NEXUS Dashboard product. Future learning paths will go into more detail about operating and implementing the NEXUS Dashboard platform.
Learning Path
NEXUS Dashboard, NEXUS Insights and AppDynamics Lab
Over the years, Cisco has developed various ACI tools (now for DCNM and NX-OS and eventually public cloud visibility) known as the day 2 operations suite. The tools are Network Assurance Engine (NAE) and NEXUS Insights (NI is now the combination of Network Insights Resources (NIR) and Network insights Advisor (NIA)). Cisco has embarked on combining NAE and NI into a single pane of glass view and providing sharable data lakes for all apps, allowing for correlating application performance and fabric events.
Advanced Configuration Lab
• 350 launches
Migrating Cisco DCNM to NDFC Lab
This lab will enable a student to migrate Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) to Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC).
Foundations Lab
• 72 launches
Cisco ACI Fundamentals Lab Part 1
This lab is the Cisco ACI Fundamentals Lab Part 1, and after completion, the student can launch Cisco ACI Fundamentals Lab Part 2 to complete the entire lab. The lab uses the ACI virtual simulator based on ACI Version 6, emulating an APIC, 2 leafs, and a spine. Part 2 uses a shared physical ACI fabric to complete the policy and verify data plane connectivity.
The ACI Virtual Simulator was needed to demo the building of the ACI fabric from scratch, bootstrapping the APIC, adding the spine and leafs, fabric discovery, and completing VMM integration. Since the Cisco ACI Fundamentals Lab, Part 2 is a shared on-demand environment, to decouple the APIC build process from the APIC policy creation. Due to limitations, the virtual ACI fabric is a control plane-only simulator, and no data plane testing (Ping, SSH) can get done for validation. Cisco ACI Fundamentals Lab Part 2 uses a Tenant inside of a physical ACI, and data plane functionality can get tested ( Ping, SSH)
Foundations Lab
• 2673 launches
Data Center Networking
The Vision and Reality of ACI Anywhere
A look at where Cisco ACI Anywhere got its start, where it is today and where WWT sees it going in the future through the lens of four business use cases.
Article
• Jun 28, 2023
Data Center Networking
Cisco DCNM and NDFC
Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), now superseded by Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), is Cisco's version of an EVPN fabric controller. DCNM, or NDFC, has three essential primary components. Spines that act like physical aggregation points for all of the leaves. Leaves provide endpoint aggregation and link to the spine. The last essential component is the controller, which in the case of DCNM is a single device or HA pair, and for NDFC, it is a Nexus Dashboard cluster with a loaded NDFC application.
In most cases, DCNM or NDFC will utilize OSPF for the underlay and VXLAN EVPN with MP-BGP as the overlay on Nexus 9000 switches. These fabric controllers are easier to use than similar fabric technologies on smaller to medium size networks, as most variables work out of the box without needing to change them. To what is known in the industry as a point and click your way to happiness.
Learning Path
Data Center Networking
The Risk of End of Support (EoS) Infrastructure in Your Data Center
This article examines what End of Support/End of Life means, how it can affect your business and steps to making a plan to refresh your data center.
Article
• May 2, 2023