Cisco Nexus 1000V

The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any upstream physical access layer switch that is Ethernet standard compliant, including the Catalyst 6500 series switch, Cisco Nexus switches, and switches from other network vendors. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any server hardware listed in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

Cisco and VMware jointly designed APIs that produced the Cisco Nexus 1000V. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is a distributed virtual switch solution that is fully integrated within the VMware virtual infrastructure, including VMware vCenter for the virtualization administrator. This solution offloads the configuration of the virtual switch and port groups to the network administrator to enforce a consistent data center network policy.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V has the following components that can virtually emulate a 66-slot modular Ethernet switch with redundant supervisor functions:

• Virtual Ethernet module (VEM) data plane—Each hypervisor is embedded with one VEM, which is a lightweight software component that replaces the virtual switch by performing the following
functions:
– Advanced networking and security
– Switching between directly attached virtual machines
– Uplinking to the rest of the network
– Only one version of VEM can be installed on an ESX/ESXi host at any given time.
- Install VEM from host by esxupdate command or using VMware update manager (VUM)

• Virtual supervisor module (VSM) control plane—The VSM is a virtual appliance that can be
installed in either a standalone or active/standby HA pair. The VSM, with the VEMs that is controls,
performs the following functions for the Cisco Nexus 1000V system. (1.5GHz, 2GB memory, 3GB disk, 3vNics: Control, Management, Packet connection to vSwitch at ESX host)

– Configuration (domain ID, HA pair: Active/Standby, Admin password, hostid for registration and license; Trial license is valid for 16 CPUs for 60 days via TFTP installation)
– Management (register VSM plug-in to vSphere client, download the xml from Cisco)
– A single VSM can manage up to 64 VEMs.
– Monitoring (Port profile from Cisco is equal to Port Group for VMware)
– Diagnostics
– Integration with VMware vCenter
– Active-standby VSMs increase high availability
- vem status (check VEM state from host)
- add host to DVS from network view, matching uplink
- show module show the VEM/VSM installed and enabled from NX CLI

In the Cisco Nexus 1000V, traffic is switched between virtual machines locally at each VEM instance.
Each VEM also interconnects the local virtual machine with the rest of the network through the upstream
access-layer network switch (blade, top-of-rack, end-of-row, and so forth).

The VSM runs the control plane protocols and configures the state of each VEM accordingly, but it never forwards packets.

In the Cisco Nexus 1000V, the module slots are for the primary module 1 and secondary module 2. Either
module can act as active or standby. The first server or host is automatically assigned to Module 3. The
Network Interface Card (NIC) ports are 3/1 and 3/2 (vmnic0 and vmnic1 on the ESX/ESXi host). The
ports to which the virtual NIC interfaces connect are virtual ports on the Cisco Nexus 1000V where they
are assigned a global number.