Cisco Cisco Nexus 1010 Virtual Services Appliance Leaflet

Q&A

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Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X Virtual Services
Appliances

Q. Why should I use the Cisco Nexus

1010 and 1010-X Virtual Services Appliances (VSAs)?

A. The Cisco

Nexus 1010 and Cisco Nexus1010-X VSAs are appliances that can provide improved

management and scalability in Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches and VMware vSphere deployments.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series can be deployed exclusively as software running in a VMware ESX or ESXi

cluster; however, the Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X VSAs provide customers with an additional deployment

option with several benefits. The VSAs are used to manage and host the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Virtual

Supervisor Modules (VSMs) that control the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Virtual Ethernet Modules (VEMs),

which reside in the hypervisor of the host server. Also, the Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X can host a variety of

virtual network services, including the Cisco Prime

™

Network Analysis Module (NAM) for Nexus 1010, Cisco

Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) for Nexus 1000V Series Switch, and Cisco Data Center Network Manager

(DCNM).

●

The Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X VSAs act like terminal servers for the networking team, providing

consoles for any of the available VSM instances residing on the VSAs. This capability is accessed through

the command-line interface (CLI) and does not require the use of VMware vCenter as a console for the

VSM instance.

●

Placing the management and control path elements, such as the VSM, on a Cisco Nexus 1010 or 1010-X

allows you to manage policies separately from VMware vCenter administrators, helping you meet

compliance and audit requirements and also reducing administrative errors. Offloading the VSM to a

dedicated appliance delivers scalability and performance improvements to the virtualized data center

infrastructure. Eliminating the dependency on VMware vCenter means that networking services no longer

depend on host servers being up and running, which can be helpful during scenarios such as data center

restarts.

●

A virtual services platform close to, but not resident within, the virtualization infrastructure permits a virtual

machine-aware solution such as Cisco Prime NAM to gain accurate network statistics directly from data

sources, including virtual ports within the hypervisor.

Q. How are the Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X deployed?

A. Based on the Cisco Unified Computing System

™

(Cisco UCS

™

) C200 M2 High-Density Rack-Mount Server

and running Cisco NX-OS Software, the Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X use a modular service blade

architecture to host multiple VSMs and other virtual network services such as Cisco VSG, Cisco Prime NAM,

and Cisco DCNM. When deployed in pairs, the appliances improve system availability by automatically

supporting active-standby configuration of the VSMs.

Q. What other services can be hosted on the Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X? And how many?

A. The Cisco Nexus 1010 and 1010-X can host virtual networking services called virtual service blades (VSBs).

As of Cisco NX-OS Release 4.2(1)SP1(3), up to six VSBs are supported on the 1010 or 1010-X. Cisco NX-OS

Release 4.2(1)SP1(4) will support up to 10 VSBs on the Nexus 1010-X platform. The following VSBs are

supported today: