Cisco Nexus Dashboard is a central management console for multiple data center sites and a common platform for hosting Cisco data center operation services, such as Nexus Dashboard Insights and Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator. These services are available for all the data center sites and provide real time analytics, visibility, assurance for network policies and operations, as well as policy orchestration for the data center fabrics, such as Cisco ACI or Cisco NDFC.

Nexus Dashboard provides a common platform and modern technology stack for the above-mentioned micro-services-based applications, simplifying the life cycle management of the different modern applications and reducing the operational overhead to run and maintain these applications. It also provides a central integration point for external 3rd party applications with the locally hosted applications.

Nexus Dashboard cluster typically consists of 1 or 3 primary nodes. For 3-node clusters, you can also provision a number of worker nodes to enable horizontal scaling and standby nodes for easy cluster recovery in case of a primary node failure. For maximum number of worker and standby nodes supported in this release, see the "Verified Scalability Limits" sections of the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Release Notes.

Note	This document describes initial configuration of the base cluster. After your cluster is up and running, you can configure and deploy additional nodes as described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide, which is also available directly from the Nexus Dashboard GUI.

Hardware vs Software Stack

Nexus Dashboard is offered as a cluster of specialized Cisco UCS servers (Nexus Dashboard platform) with the software framework (Nexus Dashboard) pre-installed on it. The Cisco Nexus Dashboard software stack can be decoupled from the hardware and deployed in a number of virtual form factors. For the purposes of this document, we will use "Nexus Dashboard hardware" specifically to refer to the hardware and "Nexus Dashboard" to refer to the software stack and the GUI console.

Note

Root access to the Nexus Dashboard software is restricted to Cisco TAC only. A special user rescue-user is created for all Nexus Dashboard deployments to enable a set of operations and troubleshooting commands. For additional information about the available rescue-user commands, see the "Troubleshooting" chapter of the Nexus Dashboard User Guide.

This guide describes the initial deployment of the Nexus Dashboard software; hardware setup is described in the Nexus Dashboard Hardware Setup Guide, while other Nexus Dashboard configuration and operations procedures are described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide.

Services

Nexus Dashboard is a standard appliance platform to build and deploy services that would allow you to consume all Nexus Dashboard products in a consistent and uniform manner. You can deploy services like Insights, Orchestrator, Fabric Controller, and Data Broker with the Nexus Dashboard platform providing the necessary capacity and life cycle management operations for these services.

Typically, the Nexus Dashboard platform is shipped with only the software required for managing the lifecycle of these services, but no actual services are packaged with the appliance. If you allow public network connectivity from your data centers, you can download and install the services with a few clicks. However, without public network connectivity, you will need to manually download these services' images, upload them to the platform, and perform installation operations before you can use them.

If you are ordering the physical Nexus Dashboard servers, you have the option to choose some services to be pre-installed on the hardware before it is shipped to you. For more information, see the Nexus Dashboard Ordering Guide. Note that if you are deploying the virtual or cloud form factors of the Nexus Dashboard, you will need to deploy the services separately after the cluster is ready.

Available Form Factors

This release of Cisco Nexus Dashboard can be deployed using a number of different form factors. Keep in mind however, you must use the same form factor for all nodes, mixing different form factors within the same cluster is not supported. The physical form factor currently supports two different Cisco UCS servers (SE-NODE-G2 and ND-NODE-L4) for the cluster nodes, which can be mixed within the same cluster.

Note	Not all services are supported on all form factors. When planning your deployment, ensure to check Cisco Nexus Dashboard Cluster Sizing for form factor and cluster size requirements.

• Cisco Nexus Dashboard physical appliance (.iso)

  This form factor refers to the original physical appliance hardware that you purchased with the Cisco Nexus Dashboard software stack pre-installed on it.

  The later sections in this document describe how to configure the software stack on the existing physical appliance hardware to deploy the cluster. Setting up the original Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform hardware is described in Cisco Nexus Dashboard Hardware Setup Guide.

• VMware ESX (.ova)

  Virtual form factor that allows you to deploy a Nexus Dashboard cluster using three VMware ESX virtual machines.

• Linux KVM (.qcow2)

  Virtual form factor that allows you to deploy a Nexus Dashboard cluster using three Linux KVM virtual machines.

• Amazon Web Services (.ami)

  Cloud form factor that allows you to deploy a Nexus Dashboard cluster using three AWS instances.

• Microsoft Azure (.arm)

  Cloud form factor that allows you to deploy a Nexus Dashboard cluster using three Azure instances.

• In an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system

  Beginning with Release 2.2(1), you can run Nexus Dashboard node in an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

Cluster Sizing and Availability Guidelines

As mentioned previously, Nexus Dashboard cluster is first deployed using 1 or 3 primary nodes. Depending on the type and number of services you choose to run, you may be required to deploy additional worker nodes in your cluster after the initial deployment. For cluster sizing information and recommended number of nodes based on specific use cases, see the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Cluster Sizing tool.

Note

Single-node clusters are supported for a limited number of services and cannot be extended to a 3-node cluster after the initial deployment. Only 3-node clusters support additional worker or standby nodes. If you deploy a single-node cluster and want to extended it to a 3-node cluster or add worker nodes, you will need to redeploy it as a base 3-node cluster. For 3-node clusters, at least two primary nodes are required for the cluster to remain operational. If two primary nodes fail, the cluster will go offline and cannot be used until you recover it as described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide.

After your initial cluster is up and running, you can configure and deploy additional nodes as described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide, which is also available directly from the Nexus Dashboard GUI.

Supported Services

For the full list of supported applications and the associated compatibility and interoperability information, see the Nexus Dashboard and Services Compatibility Matrix.

Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Domain Name System (DNS)

The Nexus Dashboard nodes require valid DNS and NTP servers for all deployments and upgrades.

Lack of valid DNS connectivity (such as if using an unreachable or a placeholder IP address) can prevent the system from deploying or upgrading successfully.

Note

Nexus Dashboard acts as both a DNS client and resolver. It uses an internal Core DNS server which acts as DNS resolver for internal services. It also acts as a DNS client to reach external hosts within the intranet or the Internet, hence it requires an external DNS server to be configured. Additionally, Nexus Dashboard does not support DNS servers with wildcard records.

Beginning with release 3.0(1), Nexus Dashboard also supports NTP authentication using symmetrical keys. If you want to enable NTP authentication, you need to provide the following information:

• NTP Key – a cryptographic key that is used to authenticate the NTP traffic between the Nexus Dashboard and the NTP server(s). You will define the NTP servers in the following step, and multiple NTP servers can use the same NTP key.

• Key ID – each NTP key must be assigned a unique key ID, which is used to identify the appropriate key to use when verifying the NTP packet.

• Auth Type – this release supports MD5, SHA, and AES128CMAC authentication types.

The following guidelines apply when enabling NTP authentication:

• For symmetrical authentication, any key you want to use must be configured the same on both your NTP server and Nexus Dashboard.

  The ID, authentication type, and the key/passphrase itself must match and be trusted on both your NTP server and Nexus Dashboard.

• Multiple servers can use the same key.

  In this case the key must only be configured once on Nexus Dashboard, then assigned to multiple servers.

• Both Nexus Dashboard and the NTP servers can have multiple keys as long as key IDs are unique.

• This release supports SHA1, MD5, and AES128CMAC authentication/encoding types for NTP keys.

  Note	We recommend using AES128CMAC due to its higher security .

• When adding NTP keys in Nexus Dashboard, you must tag them as trusted; untrusted keys will fail authentication.

  This option allows you to easily disable a specific key in Nexus Dashboard if the key becomes compromised.

• You can choose to tag some NTP servers as preferred in Nexus Dashboard.

  NTP clients can estimate the "quality" of an NTP server over time by taking into account RTT, time response variance, and other variables. Preferred servers will have higher priority when choosing a primary server.

• If you are using an NTP server running ntpd, we recommend version 4.2.8p12 at a minimum.

• The following restrictions apply to all NTP keys:

  • The maximum key length for SHA1 and MD5 keys is 40 characters, while the maximum length for AES128 keys is 32 characters.

  • Keys that are shorter than 20 characters can contain any ASCII character excluding '#' and spaces. Keys that are over 20 characters in length must be in hexadecimal format.

  • Keys IDs must be in the 1-65535 range.

  • If you configure keys for any one NTP server, you must also configure the keys for all other servers.

Enabling and configuring NTP authentication is described as part of the deployment steps in the later sections.

BGP Configuration and Persistent IPs

Older releases of Nexus Dashboard allowed you to configure one or more persistent IP addresses for services (such as Nexus Dashboard Insights) that require retaining the same IP addresses even in case they are relocated to a different Nexus Dashboard node. However, in those releases, the persistent IPs had to be part of the management and data subnets and the feature could be enabled only if all nodes in the cluster were part of the same Layer 3 network. Here the services used Layer 2 mechanisms like Gratuitous ARP or Neighbor Discovery to advertise the persistent IPs within it's Layer 3 network

Beginning with Release 2.2(1), the Persistent IPs feature is supported even if you deploy the cluster nodes in different Layer 3 networks. In this case, the persistent IPs are advertised out of each node's data links via BGP, which we refer to as "Layer 3 mode". The IPs must also be part of a subnet that is not overlapping with any of the nodes' management or data subnets. If the persistent IPs are outside the data and management networks, this feature will operate in Layer 3 mode by default; if the IPs are part of those networks, the feature will operate in Layer 2 mode. BGP can be enabled during cluster deployment or from the Nexus Dashboard GUI after the cluster is up and running.

If you plan to enable BGP and use the persistent IP functionality, you must:

• Ensure that the peer routers exchange the advertised persistent IPs between the nodes' Layer 3 networks.

• Choose to enable BGP at the time of the cluster deployment as described in the subsequent sections or enable it afterwards in the Nexus Dashboard GUI as described in the "Persistent IP Addresses" sections of the User's Guide.

• Ensure that the persistent IP addresses you allocate do not be overlap with any of the nodes' management or data subnets.

• Ensure that you fulfill the service-specific persistent IP requirements listed in Table 2 listed in the next section.

Nexus Dashboard External Networks

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is deployed as a cluster, connecting each service node to two networks. When first configuring Nexus Dashboard, you will need to provide two IP addresses for the two Nexus Dashboard interfaces—one connected to the Data Network and the other to the Management Network.

Individual services installed in the Nexus Dashboard may utilize the two networks for additional purposes, so we recommend consulting the specific service’s documentation in addition to this document for your deployment planning.

The two networks have the following requirements:

• For all new Nexus Dashboard deployments, the management network and data network must be in different subnets.

  Note	With the exception of the Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (SAN Controller), which can be deployed in Nexus Dashboard using the same subnets for the data and management networks.

• For physical clusters, the management network must provide IP reachability to each node's CIMC via TCP ports 22/443.

  Nexus Dashboard cluster configuration uses each node's CIMC IP address to configure the node.

• For Nexus Dashboard Insights service, the data network must provide IP reachability to the in-band network of each fabric and of the APIC.

• For Nexus Dashboard Insights and AppDynamics integration, the data network must provide IP reachability to the AppDynamics controller.

• For Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service, the data network can have in-band and/or out-of-band IP reachability for Cisco APIC sites but must have in-band reachability for Cisco NDFC sites.

• The data network interface requires a minimum MTU of 1500 to be available for the Nexus Dashboard traffic.

  Higher MTU can be configured if desired.

  Note	If external VLAN tag is configured for switch ports that are used for data network traffic, you must enable jumbo frames or configure custom MTU equal to or greater than 1504 bytes.

• The table bellow summarize service-specific requirements for the management and data networks.

  Note

  Changing the data subnet requires re-deploying the cluster, so we recommend using a larger subnet than the bare minimum required by the nodes and services to account for any additional services in the future. In addition to the requirements listed in this section, ensure that you consult the Release Notes for the specific service you plan to deploy.

  Allocating persistent IP addresses is done after the cluster is deployed using the External Service Pools configuration in the UI, as described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide.

  We recommend consulting the specific service's documentation for any additional requirements and caveats related to persistent IP configuration.

  Table 2. Service-Specific Network Requirements

  Nexus Dashboard Service	Management Interface	Data Interface	Total Number of Persistent IPs
  Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator	Layer 3 adjacent	Layer 3 adjacent	N/A
  Nexus Dashboard Insights without SFLOW/NetFlow (ACI fabrics)	Layer 3 adjacent	Layer 3 adjacent	N/A
  Nexus Dashboard Insights without SFLOW/NetFlow (NDFC fabrics)	Layer 3 adjacent	Layer 2 adjacent	6 IPs in data interface network if using IPv4 7 IPs in data interface network if using IPv6
  Nexus Dashboard Insights with SFLOW/NetFlow (ACI or NDFC fabrics)	Layer 3 adjacent	Layer 2 adjacent	6 IPs in data interface network
  Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller, Release 12.1.3	Layer 2 or Layer 3 adjacent	Layer 2 or Layer 3 adjacent	When operating in Layer 2 mode with LAN deployment type and LAN Device Management Connectivity set to Management (default) 2 IPs in the management network for SNMP/Syslog and SCP services If EPL is enabled, 1 additional IP in the data network for each fabric If IP Fabric for Media is enabled, 1 additional IP in the management network for telemetry When operating in Layer 2 mode with LAN deployment type and LAN Device Management Connectivity set to Data: 2 IPs in the data network for SNMP/Syslog and SCP services If EPL is enabled, 1 additional IP in the data network for each fabric If IP Fabric for Media is enabled, 1 additional IP in the data network for telemetry When operating in Layer 3 mode with LAN deployment type: LAN Device Management Connectivity must be set to Data 2 IPs for SNMP/Syslog and SCP services If EPL is enabled, 1 additional IP in the data network for each fabric All persistent IPs must be part of a separate pool that must not overlap with the management or data subnets For more information about Layer 3 mode for persistent IPs, see the Persistent IPs section in the User's Guide When operating in Layer 2 or Layer 3 mode with SAN Controller deployment type: 1 IP for SSH 1 IP for SNMP/Syslog 1 IP per Nexus Dashboard cluster node for SAN Insights functionality IP Fabric for Media is not supported in Layer 3 mode

• Connectivity between the nodes is required on both networks with the following additional round trip time (RTT) requirements.

  Note	You must always use the lowest RTT requirement when deploying the Nexus Dashboard cluster and services. For example, if you plan to co-host the Insights and Orchestrator services, site connectivity RTT must not exceed 50ms.

  Table 3. RTT Requirements

  Service	Connectivity	Maximum RTT
  Nexus Dashboard Multi-Cluster connectivity	Between nodes across clusters that are connected via multi-cluster connectivity For more information about multi-cluster connectivity, see Cisco Nexus Dashboard Infrastructure Management.	500 ms
  Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator	Between nodes	50 ms
  	To sites	For APIC sites: 500 ms For NDFC sites: 150 ms
  Nexus Dashboard Insights	Between nodes	50 ms
  	To switches	150 ms
  Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller	Between nodes	50 ms
  	To switches	200 ms*

  * POAP (PowerOn Auto Provisioning) is supported with a max RTT of 50 ms between Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller and the switches.

Nexus Dashboard Internal Networks

Two additional internal networks are required for communication between the containers used by the Nexus Dashboard:

• Application overlay is used for applications internally within Nexus Dashboard

  Application overlay must be a /16 network and a default value is pre-populated during deployment.

• Service overlay is used internally by the Nexus Dashboard.

  Service overlay must be a /16 network and a default value is pre-populated during deployment.

If you are planning to deploy multiple Nexus Dashboard clusters, they can use the same Application and Service subnets.

Note

Communications between containers deployed in different Nexus Dashboard nodes is VXLAN-encapsulated and uses the data interfaces IP addresses as source and destination. This means that the Application Overlay and Service Overlay addresses are never exposed outside the data network and any traffic on these subnets is routed internally and does not leave the cluster nodes. For example, if you had another service (such as DNS) on the same subnet as one of the overlay networks, you would not be able to access it from your Nexus Dashboard as the traffic on that subnet would never be routed outside the cluster. As such, when configuring these networks, ensure that they are unique and do not overlap with any existing networks or services external to the cluster, which you may need to access from the Nexus Dashboard cluster nodes. For the same reason, we recommend not using 169.254.0.0/16 (the Kubernetes br1 subnet) for the App or Service subnets.

IPv4 and IPv6 Support

Prior releases of Nexus Dashboard supported either pure IPv4 or dual stack IPv4/IPv6 (for management network only) configurations for the cluster nodes. Beginning with release 3.0(1), Nexus Dashboard supports pure IPv4, pure IPv6, or dual stack IPv4/IPv6 configurations for the cluster nodes and services.

When defining IP configuration, the following guidelines apply:

• All nodes and networks in the cluster must have a uniform IP configuration – either pure IPv4, or pure IPv6, or dual stack IPv4/IPv6.

• If you deploy the cluster in pure IPv4 mode and want to switch to dual stack IPv4/IPv6 or pure IPv6, you must redeploy the cluster.

• For dual stack configurations:

  • Both external (data and management) and internal (app and services) networks must be in dual stack mode.

    Partial configurations, such as IPv4 data network and dual stack management network, are not supported.

  • IPv6 addresses are also required for physical servers' CIMCs.

  • You can configure either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses for the nodes' management network during initial node bring up, but you must provide both types of IPs during the cluster bootstrap workflow.

    Management IPs are used to log in to the nodes for the first time to initiate cluster bootstrap process.

  • All internal certificates will be generated to include both IPv4 and IPv6 Subject Alternative Names (SANs).

  • Kubernetes internal core services will start in IPv4 mode.

  • DNS will serve and forward to both IPv4 and IPv6 and server both types of records.

  • VxLAN overlay for peer connectivity will use data network's IPv4 addresses.

    Both IPv4 and IPv6 packets are encapsulated within the VxLAN's IPv4 packets.

  • The UI will be accessible on both IPv4 and IPv6 management network addresses.

• For pure IPv6 configurations:

  • Pure IPv6 mode is supported for physical and virtual form factors only.

    Clusters deployed in AWS, Azure, or an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system do not support pure IPv6 mode.

  • You must provide IPv6 management network addresses when initially configuring the nodes.

    After the nodes (physical, virtual, or cloud) are up, these IPs are used to log in to the UI and continue cluster bootstrap process.

  • You must provide IPv6 CIDRs for the internal App and Service networks described above.

  • You must provide IPv6 addresses and gateways for the data and management networks described above.

  • All internal certificates will be generated to include IPv6 Subject Alternative Names (SANs).

  • All internal services will start in IPv6 mode.

  • VxLAN overlay for peer connectivity will use data network's IPv6 addresses.

    IPv6 packets are encapsulated within the VxLAN's IPv6 packets.

  • All internal services will use IPv6 addresses.

Nexus Dashboard Ports

The following ports are required by the Nexus Dashboard cluster.

Nexus Dashboard Insights Ports

In addition to the ports required by the Nexus Dashboard cluster nodes, which are listed above, the following ports are required by the Nexus Dashboard Insights service.

Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Ports

In addition to the ports required by the Nexus Dashboard (ND) cluster nodes, the following ports are required by the Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) service.

Note	The following ports apply to the Nexus Dashboard management network and/or data network interfaces depending on which interface provides IP reachability from the NDFC service to the switches.

Note	The following ports apply to the External Service IPs, also known as persistent IPs, used by some of the NDFC services. These External Service IPs may come from the Nexus Dashboard management subnet pool or the data subnet pool depending on the configured settings.

Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Ports for SAN Deployments

Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller can be deployed on a single-node or 3-node Nexus Dashboard cluster. The following ports are required for NDFC SAN deployments on single-node clusters.

Note	The following ports apply to the External Service IPs, also known as Persistent IPs, used by some of the NDFC services. These External Service IPs may come from the Nexus Dashboard management subnet pool or the data subnet pool depending on the configured settings.

The following sections describe how to connect your Nexus Dashboard cluster nodes to the management and data networks and how to connect the cluster to your fabrics.

For on-premises APIC or NDFC fabrics, you can connect the Nexus Dashboard cluster in one of two ways:

• The Nexus Dashboard cluster connected to the fabric via a Layer 3 network.

• The Nexus Dashboard nodes connected to the leaf switches as typical hosts.

For Cisco Cloud Network Controller fabrics, you must connect via a Layer 3 network.

Physical Node Cabling

Note	If you plan to deploy a virtual or cloud form factor cluster, you can skip this section.

Physical nodes can be deployed in UCS-C220-M5 (SE-NODE-G2) and UCS-C225-M6 (ND-NODE-L4) physical servers with the following guidelines:

• Both servers come with a Modular LAN on Motherboard (mLOM) card, which you use to connect to the Nexus Dashboard management network.

• The UCS-C220-M5 server includes a 4-port VIC1455 card in the "PCIe-Riser-01" slot (shown in the above diagram), which you use for Nexus Dashboard data network connectivity

• The UCS-C225-M6 server includes either a 2x10GbE NIC (APIC-P-ID10GC), or 2x25/10GbE SFP28 NIC (APIC-P-I8D25GF), or the VIC1455 card in the "PCIe-Riser-01" slot (shown in the above diagram), which you use for Nexus Dashboard data network connectivity.

When connecting the node to your management and data networks:

• The interfaces are configured as Linux bonds (one for the data interfaces and one for the management interfaces) running in active-standby mode.

• For management network:

  • You must use the mgmt0 and mgmt1 on the mLOM card.

  • All ports must have the same speed, either 1G or 10G.

• For data network:

  • On the UCS-C220-M5 server, you must use the VIC1455 card.

  • On the UCS-C225-M6 server, you can use the 2x10GbE NIC (APIC-P-ID10GC), or 2x25/10GbE SFP28 NIC (APIC-P-I8D25GF), or the VIC1455 card.

    Note	If you connect using the 25G Intel NIC, you must disable the FEC setting on the switch port to match the setting on the NIC: (config-if)# fec off # show interface ethernet 1/34 Ethernet1/34 is up admin state is up, Dedicated Interface [...] FEC mode is off

  • All interfaces must be connected to individual host-facing switch ports; Fabric Extenders (FEX), PortChannel (PC), and Virtual PortChannel (vPC) are not supported.

  • All ports must have the same speed, either 10G or 25G.

  • Port-1 corresponds to fabric0 in Nexus Dashboard and Port-2 corresponding to fabric1.

    You can use both fabric0 and fabric1 for data network connectivity.

    Note	When using a 4-port card, the order of ports depends on the model of the server you are using: On the UCS-C220-M5 server, the order from left to right is Port-1, Port-2, Port-3, Port-4. On the UCS-C225-M6 server, the order from left to right is Port-4, Port-3, Port-2, Port-1.

  • If you connect the nodes to Cisco Catalyst switches, you must add switchport voice vlan dot1p command to the switch interfaces.

    On the Catalyst switches, packets are tagged with vlan0 if no VLAN is specified. In this case, you must add switchport voice vlan dot1p command to the switch interfaces where the nodes are connected to ensure reachability over the data network.

Connecting via External Layer 3 Network

We recommend connecting the Nexus Dashboard cluster to the fabrics via an external Layer 3 network as it does not tie the cluster to any one fabric and the same communication paths can be establish to all sites. Specific connectivity depends on the type of applications deployed in the Nexus Dashboard:

• If you are deploying Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator to manage Cisco ACI fabrics only, you can establish connectivity from the data interface to either the in-band or out-of-band (OOB) interface of each site's APIC or both.

• If you are deploying Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator to manage Cisco NDFC fabrics, you must establish connectivity from the data interface to the in-band interface of each site's NDFC.

• If you are deploying Day-2 Operations applications, such as Nexus Dashboard Insights, you must establish connectivity from the data interface to the in-band network of each fabric and of the APIC.

If you plan to connect the cluster across a Layer 3 network, keep the following in mind:

• For ACI fabrics, you must configure an L3Out and the external EPG for Cisco Nexus Dashboard data network connectivity in the management tenant.

  Configuring external connectivity in an ACI fabric is described in Cisco APIC Layer 3 Networking Configuration Guide.

• For NDFC fabrics, if the data interface and NDFC’s inband interface are in different subnets, you must add a route on NDFC to reach the Nexus Dashboard's data network address.

  You can add the route from the NDFC UI by navigating to Administration > Customization > Network Preference > In-Band (eth2) , then adding the route and saving.

• If you specify a VLAN ID for your data interface during setup of the cluster, the host port must be configured as trunk allowing that VLAN.

  However, in most common deployments, you can leave the VLAN ID empty and configure the host port in access mode.

The following two figures show two distinct network connectivity scenarios when connecting the Nexus Dashboard cluster to the fabrics via a Layer 3 network. The primary purpose of each depends on the type of application you may be running in your Nexus Dashboard.

Connecting Nodes Directly to Leaf Switches

You can also connect the Nexus Dashboard cluster directly to one of the fabrics. This provides easy connectivity between the cluster and in-band management of the fabric, but ties the cluster to the specific fabric and requires reachability to other fabrics to be established through external connectivity. This also makes the cluster dependent on the specific fabric so issues within the fabric may impact Nexus Dashboard connectivity. Like in the previous example, connectivity depends on the type of applications deployed in the Nexus Dashboard:

• If you are deploying Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator to manage Cisco ACI fabrics only, you can establish connectivity from the data interface to either the in-band or out-of-band (OOB) interface of each site’s APIC.

• If you are deploying Nexus Dashboard Insights, you must establish connectivity from the data interface to the in-band interface of each fabric.

  For ACI fabrics, the data interface IP subnet connects to an EPG/BD in the fabric and must have a contract established to the local in-band EPG in the management tenant. We recommend deploying the Nexus Dashboard in the management tenant and in-band VRF. Connectivity to other fabrics is established via an L3Out.

• If you are deploying Nexus Dashboard Insights with ACI fabrics, the data interface IP address and the ACI fabric's in-band IP address must be in different subnets.

If you plan to connect the cluster directly to the leaf switches, keep the following in mind:

• If deploying in VMware ESX or Linux KVM, the host must be connected to the fabric via trunk port.

• If you specify a VLAN ID for your data network during setup of the cluster, the Nexus Dashboard interface and the port on the connected network device must be configured as trunk

  However, in most cases we recommend not assigning a VLAN to the data network, in which case you must configure the ports in access mode.

• For ACI fabrics:

  • We recommend configuring the bridge domain (BD), subnet, and endpoint group (EPG) for Cisco Nexus Dashboard connectivity in management tenant.

    Because the Nexus Dashboard requires connectivity to the in-band EPG in the in-band VRF, creating the EPG in the management tenant means no route leaking is required.

  • You must create a contract between the fabric's in-band management EPG and Cisco Nexus Dashboard EPG.

  • If several fabrics are monitored with apps on the Nexus Dashboard cluster, L3Out with default route or specific route to other ACI fabric in-band EPG must be provisioned and a contract must be established between the cluster EPG and the L3Out's external EPG.

The following two figures show two distinct network connectivity scenarios when connecting the Nexus Dashboard cluster directly to the fabrics' leaf switches. The primary purpose of each depends on the type of application you may be running in your Nexus Dashboard.

Nexus Dashboard supports distribution of cluster nodes across multiple sites. The following node distribution recommendations apply to both physical and virtual clusters.

Note	The diagrams in the following sections provide some examples of possible deployment scenarios for physical or virtual Nexus Dashboard cluster nodes. For details on the exact number of nodes required for your specific use case, see the Nexus Dashboard Capacity Planning tool.

Node Distribution for Nexus Dashboard Insights

For Nexus Dashboard Insights, we recommend a centralized, single-site deployment. This service does not support recovery in case if two primary nodes are not available and so it gains no redundancy benefits from a distributed cluster, which could instead expose the cluster to interconnection failures when nodes are in different sites.

Node Distribution for Fabric Controller

For Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller, we recommend a centralized, single-site deployment. This service does not support recovery in case if two primary nodes are not available and so it gains no redundancy benefits from a distributed cluster, which could instead expose the cluster to interconnection failures when nodes are in different sites.

Node Distribution for Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator

For Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, we recommend a distributed cluster. Keep in mind that at least two Nexus Dashboard primary nodes are required for the cluster to remain operational, so when deploying a Nexus Dashboard cluster across two sites, we recommend deploying a standby node in the site with the single primary node as shown in the following figure:

Single Site, Nexus Dashboard Insights and Orchestrator

In a single site scenario with Nexus Dashboard Insights and Orchestrator services, a single Nexus Dashboard cluster can be deployed with both services co-hosted on it.

Multiple Sites, Single Cluster for Nexus Dashboard Insights and Orchestrator

In a multiple sites scenario with Nexus Dashboard Insights and Orchestrator services, a single Nexus Dashboard cluster can be deployed with both services co-hosted on it. In this case, the nodes can be distributed between the sites, however since the Insights service does not gain redundancy benefits from a distributed cluster and could instead be exposed to interconnection failures when nodes are in different sites, we recommend the deployment option on the left:

Multiple Sites, Multiple Clusters for Nexus Dashboard Insights and Orchestrator

In this case, we recommend deploying two Nexus Dashboard cluster, with one of them dedicated to the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service using the virtual or cloud form factor and the nodes distributed across the sites.