vCloud Director and Cisco ACI integration

[KFM]

Hi all,

I am setting up a new greenfield DC and was just wondering if anyone has any experiencing or knowledge of vCD and Cisco ACI integration? For better or for worse we're not looking at NSX in doing any of the SDN stuff. I know you can use vCD to spin up Edge gateways and DLRs and attach logical switches to them but I was wondering is there the same/similar level of integration with Cisco ACI and the APIC cluster that controls it. Or even if there isn't, how do we expose ACI created dvPGs/networks to vCD?

Worse case scenario is that we simply present tenant's dvPG in vCenter to vCD then manually stitch them to the L3 gateway. This is what we've done in the past and unless someone can shed some light on it, will probably continue to do this with ACI.

Thanks in advanced!

Kam

[sk84]

As far as I know there is no Cisco ACI integration in vCD. Either you use NSX or you can only manually map vSphere port groups to tenants and provide an L3 gateway outside of vCD (but you can't manage that in vCD either).

Maybe you can build something with the vRealize Orchestrator workflows to allow at least a small amount of networking self-service. Starting with vCD 9.5, the workflows can be started in the vCD GUI by end users. For example, if a customer needs a new Org network, he can start a workflow and vRO configures ACI and maps the vSphere port group into vCD.

[KFM]

Yep, that's what I suspect will be required. I think so long as all the moving parts have an API that can be consumed, then it makes it potentially easier for some orchestration engine to do some of the heavy lifting that would normally be available out of the box.

[paluszekd]

As others stated, there's no integration today but we've seen several designs that interoperate with NSX and a datacenter fabric like ACI.

End of the day, NSX provides quite a bit of out of the box automation for virtual network services.

[KFM]

I guess that leads me to my next question which is whether we can operate vCD without NSX present at all (because we're looking at using ACI for all the SDN stuff). My guess is "no". Here's my scenario:

• vCenter is installed
• vCD 9.7 cell appliance is installed and configured
• NO NSX Manager deployed

So in order to add a vCenter into vCD using the https://vcdcell/cloud UI, part of the setup necessarily includes entering NSX manager details. Without this (because we're not going to use it, ergo it's not installed), I cannot proceed. Onto the next way then....I can use the https://vcdcell/provider UI to attach a vCenter alone but then is it mandatory that I register an NSX(-T) manager or can I just leave the vCenter as a standalone instance? I assume yes because the documentation (Attach a vCenter Server Instance Alone or Together with an NSX Manager Instance ) says:

Assuming I just leave the vCenter as a standalone, no-NSX instance, then in the https://vcdcell/provider UI under vSphere Resources I can see the vCenter itself and also objects in the Distributed Switches and Port Groups but no Hosts. If I use the https://vcdcell/cloud​ UI then under vSphere Resources I can also see objects in Switches & Port Groups, nothing in Hosts but this time nothing in vCenters. This means I cannot add any Provider VDCs as they need to be backed by a vCenter server resource. See the below screenshots as an example:

Maybe my assumption is correct and the VMware documentation is spot on, but is the reason I cannot see the vCenter server in the https://vcdcell/cloud​ UI because I haven't attached any NSX manager to the vCenter server and not just some bug or display/sync issue? Meaning that I really cannot operate vCD without a NSX instance?

I guess if the answer is we need an NSX manager then I suppose we can deploy one but not actually use any of the NSX components (DLR, DFW, VXLAN, etc) and hence we won't be billed for any of the components.

[dcrown]

I'd be interested to know if anyone tries this.  have a use case for vCD, but NSX is a dagger

[KFM]

Regarding ACI and vCD, I have just deployed this and there is no integration. We just need to import the networks pushed down by ACI as external networks into vCD.

I did have to deploy and configure a NSX Manager instance but didn't prep any clusters for NSX. It just needs to be associated with a vCenter before you can add a vCenter instance as a resource provider for a pVDC.

Apart from that, I'm not sure what you really mean by the following comment.

have a use case for vCD, but NSX is a dagger