At-A-Glance
Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation
Overview
Simplified Fabric Management
Cisco® Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) represents an evolution of the Cisco Unified
Fabric. It simplifies the deployment of data center fabric and automates consumption of
network services. It provides a scale-out architecture without congestion points in the
network while providing optimized forwarding for all types of applications. It consists of
four modular building blocks, shown in Figure 1, that can be deployed independently or
in combination.
Cisco DFA uses the Cisco Prime DCNM CPOM to provide an easy way to deploy,
provision, and manage data center fabric. It provides zero-touch deployment of fabric
nodes and automates configuration of these fabric nodes,. It discovers the data center
fabric topology and can verify the cabling of the fabric against a cable plan provided
by the operator. It provides a simple presence-based messaging interface to group an
arbitrary set of nodes and manage them as a logical element. It can provide visibility
into the location of a workload in the fabric and simplify troubleshooting of data center
fabric and tenant virtual networks (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Cisco DFA Building Blocks
Fabric
Management
Workload
Automation
Optimized
Networking
Virtual Fabrics
Figure 2. Simplified Fabric Management for Ease of Operations
OpenStack, VMware
vCD, and Cisco UCS®
Director Management
and Orchestration
Cisco and Third-Party
ISV Applications
Cisco DFA attributes and features include the following:
• Transparent integration with existing Cisco Nexus® 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series
Switches deployments and strong investment protection
• Flexible topologies and optimized traffic forwarding
REST APIs
Automated
Network Provisioning
Cisco Prime
DCNM CPOM
Common Point of
Fabric Access
• Interoperation with existing data center networks and data center fabrics
• Secure multitenancy at scale
• Central point of management (CPOM) to enforce policies for physical servers and
virtual machines
• Open northbound APIs from the Cisco Prime™ Data Center Network Manager
(DCNM) CPOM and the data center fabric
• Fabric, host, and tenant visibility
• Integration with third-party Layer 4 through 7 services, virtualization, and
management
Host, Network and Tenant Monitoring
Visibility
VM
FW
VM
MAN
The Cisco Prime DCNM CPOM provides an open Representational State Transfer
(REST) API that can be used by customers to integrate custom-developed
management tools and other third-party management tools.
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At-A-Glance
Workload Automation
Figure 4. Optimized Fabric
Cisco DFA workload automation refers to the ability to manage data center resources
dynamically on demand. It offers a framework to automate workload life-cycle. Cisco
DFA automates the provisioning of port profiles associated with a virtual machine or
physical server. Port profiles can be configured through the Cisco Prime DCNM CPOM
GUI or using the REST API provided by the Cisco Prime DCNM CPOM. The Cisco Prime
DCNM CPOM is also integrated with cloud stack tools such as Cisco UCS Director
OpenStack and VMware vCloud Director (vCD) to learn tenant network configurations
(Figure 3). Automation of virtual and physical services (L4-L7) are handled by Cisco
PNSC in a similar manner.
Figure 3. Workload Automation
Network
Administrator
defines port profile
template for virtual
machines
Distributed
Control Plane
Integrated Virtual
& Physical
VM
FW
VM
MAN/WAN
Transparent Mobility
Virtual Machine Mobility
Network Extensibility
Extensible
Resiliency
Smaller Failure Domains
Multitenant
Scale
10,000 Networks at First
Customer Shipment (FCS)
Cisco DFA fabric enables a tenant to extend their private network anywhere within
and/or across fabrics. To simplify the data center fabric while providing a scale-out
architecture, Cisco DFA uses a fabric encapsulation.
Virtual Fabrics
Server
Administrator
Subnet
QoS and
SecurityBased
Routing
1 Network administrator
Enhanced
Forwarding
Any
Network
Anywhere
VM
FW
VM
MAN
WAN
Cisco DFA allows creation of tenant-specific virtual fabrics and allows these virtual
fabrics to be extended anywhere within the physical data center fabric. It uses a
24-bit (16 million) segment identifier to support a large-scale virtual fabric that can
scale beyond the traditional 4000 VLANs (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Virtual Fabrics
2 Port profiles are automatically
created in Cisco Prime DCNM
CPOM when a server administrator
provisions a virtual machine
3 When a virtual machine
is detected, the port profile
is applied to the port
4 When a virtual machine
moves, the port profile is
automatically applied to
the new port
When a virtual machine is provisioned, the Cisco DFA leaf node autodetects the
virtual machine, pulls and applies the policies associated with the virtual machine,
on the connected port. The fabric tracks a virtual machine and moves these port
profiles within the fabric automatically. The Cisco DFA fabric is capable of applying this
automation workflow to a physical server alike.
Optimized Networking
Cisco DFA fabric uses a standard control-plane protocol to distribute the gateway
functions, thereby providing a scale-out architecture that limits the fault domain and
increases the resiliency of the fabric (Figure 4).
Human Resources
Manufacturing
Finance
Sales
Any
Workload
Anywhere
Multi-tenant
Scale
Granular
Visibility
Rapid Virtual Fabric
Deployment
No Sub-Networks
Scalable Secure
Virtual Fabrics
Routing and Switching
Segmentation
Virtual Fabric Tenant
Visibility
Workload Name-Based
Search
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Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
At-A-Glance
This virtual fabric provides transparent integration of both physical and virtual hosts. The
virtual fabric also supports integration of tenant-specific Layer 4 through Layer 7 services
– physical and virtual - such as firewalls and application delivery controllers (ADCs).
Figure 6. Cisco DFA Components
Spine
Cisco DFA Components and Platform Support
Figure 6 shows the essential components of Cisco DFA:
• Cisco DFA leaf nodes provide connectivity to computing and service appliances
such as firewalls and ADCs.
Integrated Management
• Cisco DFA border leaf nodes provide connectivity to external networks and can
optionally provide data center interconnect (DCI) and WAN services.
• Spine nodes provide backplane connectivity to all leaf and border leaf nodes.
• The Cisco Prime DCNM CPOM provides integrated management for the entire fabric.
Border Leaf
Leaf
Note that you are not tied to a particular topology with this architecture. Even though
Cisco recommends a Clos or fat-tree topology, customers can deploy any topology
that meets their application needs.
Benefits of Cisco DFA
Cisco DFA offers many benefits:
• Management simplicity: Central point of management with customizable workflow automation.(Figure 7).
Figure 7. Cisco DFA Offers Management Simplicity
Today
Point to
Consider When
Subnet
Provisioning a
Tenant
Cisco DFA
Approach
1
2
VLAN
Space
3
Layer 2 or
Layer 3
Connections
4
IPv4 or IPv6
5
Multicast
Needs
6
Latency
Needs
7
Layer 4-7
Requirements
8
Workload
Mobility
Requirements
9
Virtual and
Physical
Communication
10
Overprovisioning
Future Growth
QoS and
Security
Policies
• Simplified Operations
1
• Physical and Virtual Integration
2
• Application Consistency
Create Tenant
Profile
Create
Workloads
Network Is
Autoprovisioned
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Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
At-A-Glance
• Flexible workload placement and mobility: Enables virtual machines to be deployed
and moved across the fabric on demand within and across data centers.
• Massive scalability on demand: Cisco DFA provides a nonblocking fabric capable
of more than 240 terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth supporting more than
50,000 edge ports at FCS. Cisco DFA fabric scales seamlessly from a few 100s of
servers to more than 100,000 servers, with a plan to scale up to 1 million physical
and virtual servers,. Data center capacity can be incrementally added, with high
bisectional bandwidth, high availability, with predictable latency.
• Multitenancy: Cisco DFA uses a fabric header that can support up to 16 million
segments theoretically. The initial release, will support 10,000 tenants.
Conclusion
Cisco DFA is a culmination of Cisco’s experience, innovation, and product leadership in
the data center market. Cisco DFA evolves the data center from traditional architecture
to a streamlined workload lifecycle management framework. It brings simplification,
automation, and optimization to data centers transparently, which helps to lower your
TCO.
Customers can use Cisco Services to migrate to Cisco DFA or deploy Cisco DFA in
a completely new (greenfield) environment. With Cisco Services, you’ll know more,
save more, and innovate more. You can rely on us because we’re a worldwide leader
in IT, helping companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow. We have more than 28
years of experience, 50 million installed devices, and 6 million customer interactions
each year. Delivered by Cisco and our Cisco Certified Partners, service engagements
result in measurable business gains for our customers, who have achieved benefits
such as 15 to 20 percent faster time to revenue, 30 percent lower infrastructure costs,
50 percent faster disaster recovery, and 90 percent reduction in deployment time. For
information about Cisco Services, visit www.cisco.com/go/services.
For More Information
http://www.cisco.com/go/dfa
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.
Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
C45-731012-00 04/14