Cisco Cisco Intercloud Fabric for Provider White Paper

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Cisco Prime Network Services Controller

Cisco Prime NSC software is a major element of many Cisco enterprise networking solutions, including Cisco

Intercloud Fabric. Through a single pane, you can automate virtual network management to make configuration

changes quickly and consistently. Cisco Prime NSC supports greater scalability along with standardization and

adherence to policies in complex environments. In a Cisco Intercloud Fabric environment, Intercloud Fabric
Director communicates with Cisco Prime NSC using Cisco Prime NSC’s northbound API, and customers and IT

staff do not need to access Cisco Prime NSC directly to create or deploy workloads.

Secure Cloud Extension

The Secure Cloud Extension component forms the basis for the core switching and services infrastructure in the

Cisco Intercloud Fabric solution. The Secure Cloud Extension provides the following features:

●

Secure Layer 2 network extension from a private cloud to the provider cloud

●

Advanced switching features for applications running in the provider cloud

●

Support for services such as zone-based firewalls and routing in the provider cloud

The Secure Cloud Extension consists of several components working together to provide these functions. The

private cloud is connected to the provider cloud through a highly secure tunnel that is established between a pair of

virtual appliances: the Intercloud Fabric Extender and the Intercloud Fabric Switch. The Intercloud Fabric Extender

runs in the private cloud, and the Intercloud Fabric Switch runs in the provider cloud, and these appliances can be

deployed in a high-availability pair to provide redundancy. Virtual services can also be deployed in this environment

to provide firewall and routing support in the provider cloud.

Intercloud Fabric Extender

The Intercloud Fabric Extender is a virtual machine that runs in the private cloud and provides the following

functions:

●

Establishes a secure site-to-site tunnel to interconnect with the intercloud fabric switch in the provider cloud

●

Interacts with the virtual switch at the private cloud

Intercloud Fabric Switch

The Intercloud Fabric Switch is a virtual machine that runs in the provider cloud and provides the following

functions:

●

Runs the virtual Ethernet module (VEM) to provide Cisco Nexus

1000V Switch functions in the cloud

●

Establishes a secure tunnel to connect the VEM with the Intercloud Fabric Extender

●

Establishes secure tunnels to connect all the cloud virtual machines

●

Monitors and reports statistics of virtual machines in the cloud

●

Monitors and reports any component failures in the cloud to Cisco Prime NSC

The embedded VEM in the Intercloud Fabric Switch is responsible for the following:

●

Communicates with the virtual supervisor module (VSM) function that runs at the private cloud to retrieve

virtual machine

–specific network policies such as port profiles

●

Switches the network traffic between cloud virtual machines