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Overview
This document provides design guidelines for deploying Cisco Nexus
®
1100 Series Virtual Services Appliances
(VSAs). The Cisco Nexus 1110-S and 1110-X VSAs are the first appliances in the Cisco Nexus 1100 Series.
For detailed feature-level configuration documentation, please refer to the respective Cisco
®
product configuration
guides located at
http://www.cisco.com/go/1100
.
Links to additional information can be found in the “For More
Information” section of this document.
Audience
This document is intended for network architects, network engineers, virtualization administrators, and server
administrators interested in understanding and deploying the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Swtiches utilizing the
Cisco Nexus 1100 Series in a Cisco data center environment.
Introduction
The Cisco Nexus 1100 Series VSAs (Figure 1) are members of the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches portfolio.
They host the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Virtual Supervisor Modules (VSMs) and provide support for Cisco virtual
service blades (VSBs) to offer a more comprehensive solution for virtual access switching. Because the Cisco
Nexus VSAs provide dedicated hardware for the VSM, they makes virtual access switch deployment easier for the
network administrator. Support for additional VSBs such as the Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), Cisco
Prime
™
Network Analysis Module (NAM), and Cisco Data Center Network Mangager (DCNM) makes the Cisco
Nexus VSAs crucial components of a virtual access switch solution.
Figure 1.
Cisco Nexus 1110-S and 1110-X Virtual Services Appliances
Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches
Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches are virtual machine access switches. They are intelligent switches designed
for hypervisor environments running the Cisco NX-OS Software operating system. Operating inside the hypervisor,
the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series supports server virtualization technology to provide:
●
Policy-based virtual machine connectivity
●
Mobile virtual machine security and network policy
●
Nondisruptive operational model for server virtualization and networking teams
When server virtualization is deployed in the data center, virtual servers typically are not managed the same way
as physical servers. Server virtualization is treated as a special deployment, leading to longer deployment times,
with a greater degree of coordination needed among server, network, storage, and security administrators. With
the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series, you can have a consistent networking feature set and provisioning process all the
way from the virtual machine access layer to the core of the data center network infrastructure. Virtual servers can
now use the same network configuration, security policy, diagnostic tools, and operation models as their physical
server counterparts attached to dedicated physical network ports. Virtualization administrators can access a
predefined network policy that follows mobile virtual machines to help ensure proper connectivity, saving valuable
time to allow you to focus on virtual machine administration. This comprehensive set of capabilities helps you
deploy server virtualization and achieve its benefits more quickly.
