The Cisco Nexus family includes a generous number of different Nexus models to meet the demands of any Data Center (DC) environment. Indeni can support a broad range of the Nexus Series Switches and deployed technologies. More details can be found to the following sections.

At a Glance Indeni supported Main DC Technologies and Features

The following table summarizes the Nexus Series Switches supported by the Indeni Server.  The Software Release of the Indeni Server which supports the monitoring of the Nexus Product Family is the 5.9 .  In addition, the NX-OS versions, the main DC technologies as well as the network services supported by the 5.9 Release of the Indeni Server are included to the following table. It should be noticed that more features and DC technologies for monitoring and proactively alerting will be included to the next Indeni server Release.

Nexus Series Switches supported by the Indeni Server

This section discusses thoroughly the CISCO Nexus series switches supported for monitoring and alerting by the Indeni Server. In particular, it is provided information for the supported Nexus models, a brief description of the role for each series switches in a Data Center and the impact that a failure or misconfiguration could have o at a Data Center.

The ranking in impact takes into consideration the number of devices that can be affected in case of failure or misconfiguration at a Data Center deployed with the best network design practices. It does not take into account the impact severity in Application level. Finally, a table is provided by the end of the section summarizing the main points.

Cisco Nexus 1000v Series Switches

Models: 1000v

Brief Description: The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is a software-based switch and operates inside the VMware ESX hypervisor. It utilizes the NX-OS Software. It consists of two main components: the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM) and the Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM). These two components make up the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch, with the VSM providing the management plane and the VEM providing the data plane.

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration:  It affects only the VM infrastructure

Severity: Medium

Cisco Nexus 2000 Series & FEX Switches

Models: B22 blade FEX, 2100, 2200 & 2300 product series

Brief Description: It is a flexible and low cost solution to increase the number of the access and server ports at a data center. It utilizes the FEX technology. The parent switch of an N2k switch can be a Nexus 5000, Nexus 7000 or Nexus 9000 series switch. With FEX technology the N2k acts as a remote line card since the entire configuration and management is performed on the parent switch

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration:  It affects the end hosts connected to the FEX

Severity: Low

Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches

Models: 3000, 3100, 3100V, 3200, 3500 & 3600 product series

Brief Description: This Switch series offer features such as latency of less than a microsecond, line-rate at Layer 2 & 3 unicast and the support of 40 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. These switches are mainly used in environments with ultra-low latency requirements such as financial High-Frequency Trading (HFT), High-Performance Computing (HPC) and automotive crash-test simulation Applications

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration: It affects the end hosts connected to the Nexus 3000 Series Switch

Severity: Low

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches

Models: 56128P, 5696Q, 5672UP, 5672UP-16G, 5648Q, 5624Q, 5596T,  5596UP,  5548UP, 5548P,  5020, 5010

Brief Description: It is mainly used as End of Row Switches at a DC access layer, providing architectural support for virtualization and Unified Fabric environments. Cisco Nexus 5000 Series can support several DC technologies such as VPC, FEX, VXLAN and comprehensive Layer 2 and 3 features for scaling data center networking. In addition, it supports Native Fibre Channel, Ethernet, and FCoE interfaces.

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration: It affects the end hosts, service nodes and FEX connected to the Nexus 5000 Series Switch

Severity: Medium

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches

Models: 7000, 7700 product lines

Brief Description: It can provide an end-to-end data center architecture on a single platform, including data center core, aggregation, and access layer. The N7k series switches support high-density 10, 40, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. The main features of the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series are: FEX, virtual Port Channel (vPC), VDC, MPLS, Fabricpath as well as DCI robust technologies such as OTV and LISP.

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration: It affects the end hosts, service nodes , N5k switches and FEX connected to the Nexus 7000 Series Switch

Severity: High

Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches

Models: 9200, 9300, 9300-EX, 9500-EX, 9500 Cloud Scale

Brief Description: The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series support main DC technologies such as Fabric Extender Technology (FEX), virtual Port Channel (vPC), and Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN). The Nexus 9000 supports Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) in contrast to the Nexus 7000 switches.  However, the Cisco Nexus 9000 switches do not support the VDCs (Virtual Device Context) technology like the Nexus 7000. Besides, the Nexus 9000 Series doesn't support storage protocols, in contrast to the Nexus 7000. Finally, it is foreseen that the Nexus 9000 will complement the Nexus 7000 as data centers transition to ACI.

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration: It affects the end hosts, service nodes , N5k switches and FEX connected to the Nexus 9000 Series Switch

Severity: High

Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Switches

Models: 9100, 9200, 9500, 9700

Brief Description: Cisco MDS 9000 Series Multilayer Switches are used to support Data Center SAN setup. This series offers director-class platforms and Fabric switches. It utilizes the Cisco NX-OS software. Finally, the MDS 9000 can offer native fibre channel, storage services, and FCoE.

Impact in case of failure or misconfiguration: Affects the Storage Traffic at Data Center

Severity: High

Finally, the following table summarizes the Nexus Switches models, the Device Type, the Operating System and the Indeni Software Release support status.

[1] : ACI-mode not currently supported.