Cisco Elastic Services Controller
Business success is increasingly dictated by agility - the ability to respond quickly to
change, bring new services to market fast, and to do all of this within an environment
that is simple and inexpensive to operate. The Cisco® Elastic Services Controller
(ESC) promotes agility, flexibility and programmability in Network Function
Virtualization (NFV) environments - and offers comprehensive automated lifecycle
management capabilities. By design, Cisco ESC is built as an open and a modular
system. It provides a single point of control to manage all aspects of VNF lifecycle for
generic virtual network functions (VNFs) in a dynamic environment. Drawing on
industry standards and open APIs, you can control the full lifecycle of all of your
virtualized resources, whether using Cisco or third-party VNFs, allowing you to choose
best-of-breed industry solutions.
Cisco ESC in combination with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) enabled by Tail-f® will manage
complete VNFs, as well as the entire network service lifecycle.
The Cisco ESC is a key product in the Cisco NFV orchestration portfolio, which provides an advanced lifecycle
management platform for NFV. It gives you everything you need to implement, monitor, and elastically scale VNFs
in an automated fashion. In short, it makes the promise of NFV - end-to-end automation, agility, and simplicity - a
reality in your business.
Cisco ESC provides advanced VNF lifecycle management capabilities through an open, standards-based platform
that conforms to the ETSI NFV management and orchestration (MANO) reference architecture (Figure 1).
By conforming to industry NFV standards and exposing well-defined APIs, it can interoperate with any standardsbased NFV orchestration system.
Figure 1.
Cisco ESC Conformance to ETSI NFV MANO Reference Architecture
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Cisco ESC performs dynamic provisioning and scaling of individual or groups of VNFs within a multitenant data
center environment. ESC can create Tenants, Flavors, and Networks in Openstack, as the constructs are required
for VNF provisioning. ESC can orchestrate VNFs within a virtual infrastructure domain, for example, in the
Openstack controller or VMware vCenter domain.
Figure 2.
Cisco Service Orchestration Portfolio
Cisco NSO communicates with Cisco ESC using the open NETCONF protocol and YANG based data models.
Cisco ESC manages Virtual Network Functions at a device level, and NSO manages the service lifecycle.
Together, they make it a complete orchestration solution that spans across both physical and virtual infrastructure.
Feature
Benefit
Integration with Cisco NSO
● Support for full service and VNF lifecycle
Agentless and open
● Eliminate agent barrier and overheads. Supports any vendor, any
application, any VNF out of the box
Virtual infrastructure management (VIM) agnostic
● Abstract virtualization layer complexities for VNF deployments.
Designed to support next-gen technologies of containers, cloud NFV
environments and multiple VIM support
VNF lifecycle management (create VNF, Day Zero configuration,
license management, read and delete VNF)
● Faster time to customer and time to market for services
Virtual machine and service, monitoring and actions: VNF
autohealing, autoscale, recovery, and service elasticity
● Higher service availability, service scalability, and optimal resource
consumption
● Defined policies to manage service lifecycle and trigger actions and
notifications
Programmability, northbound programmatic interface
(NETCONF/YANG, REST API)
● Integration to orchestration flow for full automation
Customization for VNF operations
● Flexibility to allow for service-specific differentiation
Transaction resume and rollback
● Reduce manual fallout
Coupled VNF management (virtual machine affinity, startup order,
and management of VM interdependency)
● Support for full automation of complex deployments
Service advertisement
● Integration to overall OSS and orchestration for full automation
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Figure 3.
Cisco ESC NFV Lifecycle Management
The main functional blocks of Cisco ESC are:
●
VNF provisioning and configuration: Create, read, and delete VNF as a single VM or a Group of VMs. On
creating a VNF, Cisco ESC provision VM with Day Zero configurations (management IP, gateway, smartlicensing parameters, and any other VNF supported bootstrap configurations).
●
Monitoring engine: VM resource, state or service monitoring using SNMP, ICMP, and custom monitoring
KPIs
●
Rules engine: Intelligent rules engine to trigger actions based on monitoring thresholds. Allows predefined
sets or custom actions, as well as simple and complex actions (a sequence of actions triggered for single
event)
Cisco ESC Functions in a Nutshell
● Open and agentless VNF management (any vendor, any application, any VNF)
● VNF lifecycle management (create, read, and delete)
● VNF Day Zero configurations
● VM and service monitoring, elasticity
● VNF autohealing, recovery
● VNF license management
● End-to-end customization support for VNF operations
● Transaction resume and rollback
● Coupled VNF management (VM affinity, startup order, and manage VM interdependency)
● Service advertisement
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 3 of 6
Service Agility
Your business processes aren’t designed around instantiating virtual machines, but around delivering services,
which may involve multiple VMs working together or implemented in a specific way. For example, in some cases,
you might need to implement a single VM, like a Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V, for a specific application. In
others, the service may involve a group of VMs that have interdependencies. You may be deploying multiple VMs
that need to be on the same host. Or you may need to spin up a group of linked VMs in a particular order to create
a composite virtual service.
In a typical virtualized environment, instantiating multiple interdependent VMs involves complex, manual
processes. Which means it can take days or even weeks to bring up a new service.
Cisco ESC can provide lifecycle management capabilities for single VMs or groups of multiple VMs. So whether a
new service involves a single VM or a group of composite VNFs operating together or in sequence, it automates
the entire process, so you can deliver the new service within minutes.
Agentless VNF Management and Monitoring
While the mode that uses an agent is the most common solution available in the market, it may not be suitable for
NFV deployment in most environments. The need to integrate an agent mandatorily inside a multivendor VNF to
make it deployable in a NFV solution has many challenges.
●
Time to market - Every VNF must undergo the agent integration first before it is ready for deployment, and
this integration may take a considerable amount of time.
●
VNF revalidation and/or recertification - It is quite likely that integration of the agent inside the VNF may
impact its performance and stability, and it may have to be revalidated and recertified again by the
associated vendors.
●
Potential ownership problems in case of issues - Situations may arise where a VNF may come from
Vendor A, while the orchestrator and the agent are given by Vendor B. If there is a problem after the
integration of the agent inside the VNF, there may be a potential ownership and accountability issue
between the two associated vendors. This poses a serious business risk of operationalizing this model.
●
Scalability of the model - Integration of agents into many different VNFs coming from a wide array of
vendors may face a scalability challenge unless those VNFs haven’t already gone through the integration
before.
To address these challenges, Cisco ESC solution supports a model of VNF deployment that requires absolutely no
agent. This is a major advantage of the solution, as it helps service providers build a solution to address all
limitations mentioned above. With the agentless mode of operations, the Cisco ESC can monitor VNF utilization or
can use other protocols such as SNMP or even custom scripts, in case if it has to monitor something more specific
that standard VM KPI characteristics.
Multivendor VNF Support
Cisco ESC capabilities are entirely agnostic to the underlying device. Whether the service encompasses a Cisco
Cloud Services Router (CSR), a Cisco virtualized firewall, Mobility Virtual Packet Core, or a network service
appliance from a third-party vendor, or a combination of VNFs in a service chain, you can use the same tools to
automate and accelerate deployment, provisioning, and scaling.
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Virtualization Infrastructure Requirements
Canonical Openstack
Icehouse Release
RedHat Openstack
Icehouse, Juno, Kilo Release
Hypervisor Supported
KVM
Cisco ESC Resource Requirements
Processor
4 Virtual CPUs (vCPUs)
Memory
8 GB
Hard Drive
30 GB
Feature
Support, Details
Multitenancy
Yes
High availability
Yes
Supported scale
Up to 2500 active VMs
VNF affinity/anti-affinity
Yes
VM Initial configuration
Yes
Immediate new VNF support
VNF Requirements:
Openstack:
1. QCOW2 Image format
2. Openstack Config-Drive support
VMware:
1. OVA Image
2. OVF properties for day-0 configurations
VNF monitoring
ICMP Ping, SNMP and Custom Monitoring
Northbound interface
NETCONF API, REST API, CLI, GUI
Ordering Information
Cisco ESC is orderable and shipping. Cisco Elastic Services Controller is licensed per managed VM instance. ESC
SKUs are available in Small, Medium and Large form factors. Based on VNF scale in the environment, multiple
quantities can be procured of any type of SKU.
For additional product numbers, including the Cisco Orchestration bundle offerings, please contact your local Cisco
account representative. To place an order, and download software, visit the Cisco Ordering Home Page.
Cisco ESC Licensing information
Part Number
Product Description
L-ESC-VNF-S-LIC50P
Perpetual, Cisco ESC Right to Manage Quantity 50 Small (1 vCPU) Virtual Machines
L-ESC-VNF-M-LIC50P
Perpetual, Cisco ESC Right to Manage Quantity 50 Medium (<4 vCPUs) Virtual Machines
L-ESC-VNF-L-LIC25P
Perpetual, Cisco ESC Right to Manage Quantity 25 Large (4 to 7 vCPUs) Virtual Machines
L-ESC-VNF-XL-LIC2P
Perpetual, Cisco ESC Right to Manage Quantity 2 Extra-Large (8 or more vCPUs) Virtual Machines
L-ESC-VNF-A-LIC25P
Perpetual, Cisco ESC Right to Manage Quantity 25 of Any Size (Mix) Virtual Machines
Warranty Information
Cisco ESC has a 90-day limited software warranty. For more information about the Cisco ESC warranty, see
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/warranty/English/EU1KEN_.html.
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Cisco Service and Support
Cisco Software Support Service (SWSS) offers complete coverage that keeps your software applications running
smoothly and protects your investment with a powerful combination of services. Assistance includes software
updates and upgrades, 24-hour technical support, and access to Cisco online troubleshooting tools.
What You Get:
●
Application software major upgrades and updates
●
Global access to experts in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC)
●
Self-help through online support communities, resources, and tools
Cisco and Partner Services
Cisco Services and certified partners can help you adopt the Cisco ESC and NSO, integrated to your particular
requirements. A key advantage of the Cisco NSO is its quick customization phase. If you are used to lengthy and
costly OSS projects, you will see the difference. Cisco and our partners can also train you to do the customizations
yourself.
Cisco Capital
Financing to Help You Achieve Your Objectives
Cisco Capital can help you acquire the technology you need to achieve your objectives and stay competitive. We
can help you reduce CapEx. Accelerate your growth. Optimize your investment dollars and ROI. Cisco Capital
financing gives you flexibility in acquiring hardware, software, services, and complementary third-party equipment.
And there’s just one predictable payment. Cisco Capital is available in more than 100 countries. Learn more.
Printed in USA
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