Datacenter : Introduction to VDC- Virtual Device Context
Let’s talk about VDC in datacenter. Many of you guys already aware if VDC concept. VDC is basically partition of Single Physical Device into Multiple Logical Devices. VDC runs as a separate logical entity within the physical device, maintains its own unique set of running software processes.
Each VDC appears as a unique device to the connected users.VDCs also virtualizes the control plane, which comprises all those software functions that are treated by the CPU on the active supervisor module.VDC provides Fault Isolation, Management Isolation, Address Allocation Isolation, Configuration Isolation.
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| Introduction to VDC |
Types of VDC
There are three types of VDC’s. They are Default VDC, Non-Default VDC and Storage VDC. Let’s talk about all these VDC’s
Default VDC
The physical device always has one VDC, the default VDC (VDC 1).
Can make changes to other VDCs only from default VDC.
Can create up to four VDCs (including a default VDC).
You need to login as network-admin in order to create VDCs.
Non-Default VDC
Other VDCs (which is not VDC 1) are considered Non-Default VDC.
When logged in Non-Default VDC, you can view and manage only that particular VDC configs and not others
Storage VDC
You create separate storage VDCs to run FCoE-Beginning with Cisco NX-OS 5.2(1), you can run FCoE on F1 Series modules.
We can have only one storage VDC on the device.
We cannot configure the default VDC as a storage VDC-More to come when dealing with FCoE.
Pre-Requisites for Creating VDC
Login to default VDC with network-admin user role in order to create VDC.
Have a name for VDC and resources available on physical device to allocate.
Have IP address to use for configuring connectivity (VDC Management).
Now let’s talk about VDC management. There are two kind of VDC management, and these are VDC out of band management and VDC In-band Management.
VDC Out-of-Band Management
The Cisco NX-OS software provides a virtual management (mgmt 0) interface for out-of-band management for each VDC.
We can configure this interface with a separate IP address that is accessed through the physical mgmt 0 interface.
Using the virtual management interface allows you to use only one management network, which can share the AAA servers and syslog servers among the VDCs.
VDC In-band Management
VDCs also support in-band management. You can access the VDC using one of the Ethernet interfaces that are allocated to the VDC
Using the in-band management allows you to use only separate management networks, which ensures the separation of the AAA servers and syslog servers among the VDCs.
In our next article, we will discuss on the configuration on VDC.
