Cisco Cisco Prime Network Services Controller Adaptor for DFA Livre blanc

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Figure 31. POAP Switch Definition Controls

Device Autoconfiguration and Profiles

Cisco DFA fabrics support autoconfiguration. With autoconfiguration, when a new workload such as a virtual

machine or physical host appears on a fabric switch, the switch automatically determines the virtual network

segment to which the workload belongs and configures it accordingly. This capability enables automatic

synchronization of workload automation and orchestration. Custom scripts, Cisco UCS Director (UCSD), VMware

vCloud Director (VCD), and OpenStack can exploit this capability. This behavior is sometimes referred to tenant-
aware networking. In this section, the terms “tenant” and “organization” are used interchangeably.

The Cisco Prime DCNM 7.0 LDAP directory (DB) stores the autoconfiguration data and keeps track of the tenants

(or organizations), partitions (or virtual data centers), and network (or segments). In doing so, it provides the

appropriate network parameters to the switch when the switch must configure a port to accept a new workload.

The tenant (or organization) hierarchy is as follows:

Organization

Partition (VDC

) 1

Network name 1

Network name 2

…

Network name n

Partition (VDC) 2

…

Partition (VDC) n

The switch gets the network configuration data from the LDAP directory (DB) when an autoconfiguration event

occurs.

The components involved are:

●

Cisco Prime DCNM server LDAP database

●

Autoconfiguration profiles stored in the LDAP database (part of the Cisco Prime DCNM OVA)

●

Cisco Prime DCNM AMQP server

●

Orchestration mechanism such as VMware VCD or OpenStack

●

Switch device’s autoconfiguration functions

A VDC, or virtual data center, is the same thing as a partition.