Nexus 1000V Questions

dtran · ‎10-28-2011

Hi all,

I am looking into deploying the Nexus 1000V in my VMware environment and have a couple questions. Hope someone can help clarify. Thanks in advance !!!

- How does the licensing work ? do I need a license per VSM ? do I need a license per VEM ?

- Per Cisco recommendation I believe it is recommended to have the VSM and VEM on the same ESX host, is this correct ? if this is the case I would need to have a VSM on every ESX host ?

- Does anyone have any design document or best practices that can share ?

I appreciate any inputs / suggestions !!

D.

dominic.caron · ‎10-31-2011

Hi,

License: You dont need any licence for the VSM. You need 1 license per CPU socket(not core). If your ESX host as 2 intel CPU, it will need two license even if its only running 1 VEM.

VSM and VEM : We played a lot with the placement of the VSM and if can get complicated when you try to run both VSM and VEM on the same ESX. In the end, I've decided to create another VM infrastructure with two small servers. This infra run's my VCenter, VUM and VSM for my main production cluster. The management infra only use VMware Vswitch.

I dont know about any good design guides, I've experimented many deployment options and tried to made them crash. This turned out be be the best one for us.

Amit Singh · ‎10-31-2011

As mentioned by Dominic, You need license per CPU.

You have two options with the VSM. Either use the VSM as a VM on the same ESX host or another ESX host running dedicated VM or any other management application. You can also use Nexus1010 which is a dedicated applicance for running N1Kv VSM and other service like vNAM, VSG etc.

Please see below a couple of design guides on Nexus1000v. The second link is on UCS but can be used for any specific ESX deployment.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9902/white_paper_c11-558242.html

HTH,

-amit singh

dtran · ‎10-31-2011

Thanks Amit !!! Thanks Dominic !!!

In regard to licensing, a license is required per CPU on the ESX host (not on the guest host) correct ?

D.

Marwan ALshawi · ‎10-31-2011

have a look at this document i recently posted on CSC it might be useful

Cisco UCS Virtualized Networking Simplified:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-19068

hope this help