Cisco Cisco Prime Virtual Network Analysis Module (vNAM) 6.0 Livre blanc

1000V generally fulfills this role within the architecture. Depending upon the level of software 
functionality (such as quality of service (QoS) or security policy) or scale required, the Cisco VM Fabric 
Extender (VM-FEX) can serve as a hardware-based alternative to the Nexus 1000V.

A second subsystem is virtual services (vApp-based), which can include security, SLB, network 
analysis, and optimization services. Services implemented at this layer of the infrastructure complement 
more centralized service applications, and uniquely apply to a specific tenant or workgroup and their 
applications. Specific vApp-based services previously validated for the VMDC architecture include 
Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), providing a second security policy enforcement point within the 
tenant virtual data center or Virtual Private Cloud container. Additionally, in this release, IOS-XE ZBF 
features on the CSR or ASA 1000V provide perimeter firewalling; Citrix NetScaler VPX provides SLB; 
the CSR or VPX provide NAT; the CSR provides IPsec VPN termination; Virtual Network Analysis 
Module (vNAM) provides network analysis; and Virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS) 
provides WAN optimization. 

The third subsystem in the Compute layer is the computing resource. This subsystem includes physical 
servers, hypervisor software providing compute virtualization abilities, and the VMs. The Cisco Unified 
Computing System (UCS), featuring redundant 6100 or 6200 Fabric Interconnects, UCS 5108 Blade 
Chassis, and B-Series Blade or C-Series servers, comprise the compute resources in the VMDC reference 
architecture.

The Storage layer provides storage resources. Data stores reside in a storage area network (SAN), which 
is block-based, or in network attached storage (NAS), which is file-based. SAN switching nodes provide 
an additional level of resiliency, interconnecting multiple SAN storage arrays to the compute resources 
over redundant FibreChannel or FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) links.

The Management layer comprises the "back-end" hardware and software resources required to manage 
the multi-tenant infrastructure. These resources include domain element management systems and 
higher level service orchestration systems. The domain management systems currently validated within 
VMDC include Cisco UCS Manager, Cisco Integrated Management Controller, VMware vCenter, and 
vCloud Director for compute resource allocation; EMC UIM and Cisco Fabric Manager for storage 
administration; vWAAS Central Manager for traffic optimization services management; and Cisco VSM 
and Virtual Network Management Center (VNMC) for virtual access and virtual services management. 
Network Analysis Modules (NAMs), residing within Nexus 1010 systems or as vNAMs within the 
compute layer of the infrastructure, provide network analysis functionality.

Also available and validated as Flexpod domain management components are the NetApp OnCommand 
Unified Manager and OnCommand System Manager software, NetApp VSC (Virtual Storage Console - 
a vCenter plug-in that provides end-to-end virtual machine (VM) monitoring, provisioning, B&R and 
management for VMware vSphere environments running on NetApp storage).

This layer can also include third party NetFlow collectors for aggregating and correlating network 
statistics. Automated service provisioning, including cross-resource service orchestration, is provided 
by BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) or Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (CIAC). 
Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance provides “Day 2” service impact visibility and root cause analysis 
tools. However, service orchestration and assurance solutions were not in scope for this VMDC system 
release.