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Cisco Nexus® Dashboard transforms data-center and cloud network operations with simplicity, automation, and analytics.
Product overview
In this era of digital transformation and business resiliency, continuous innovation is critical for organizations to succeed, and experiencing downtime along the way is not an option. Users increasingly demand more features, better usability, reliability, and environmental sustainability from the applications they use.
The network plays a huge role in meeting such demands, and provisioning reliable data-center and cloud-networking services as fast as possible, when and where organizations need it, is a must. However, network infrastructure management is becoming more complex, diverse, and distributed, with multiple configuration points, monitoring tools, and vast amounts of data generated every second (Figure 1).
Network complexity in a hyper-diverse and hyper-distributed world
Having an inconsistent way of configuring, provisioning, and operating the network often leads to human errors, potential security holes, and a reactive break-then-fix model that commonly increases downtime due to manual correlation and endless finger-pointing between teams.
Included with every Cisco Nexus 9000 switch tiered licensing purchase, Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides a single focal point to unite the disparate network configurations and views of multiple switches, data centers, and clouds (Figure 2).
Cisco Nexus Dashboard: powering automation and analytics with a unified, agile, and sustainable networking platform
By providing a single point of management that empowers users to provision and operate their networks across different switches, fabrics and locations, Cisco Nexus Dashboard is evolving to become one of the simplest ways to provision, monitor, and manage data-center and cloud networks.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides multiple services (Figure 3) that bring the one of the best of cloud-operational models to your networks, whether Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI®), Cisco NX-OS (through the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller service and/or running in standalone mode), or a Cisco Cloud Network Controller running in a public cloud provider environment.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform
With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, you get a unified operations view across all your fabrics and clouds and the services they consume. It scales out based on the size and number of fabrics and the operational services used to manage them.
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Admin Console (Figure 4) informs the operator of the health of the various clusters, fabrics, clouds, and infrastructure services to quickly detect issues and their root cause, allowing users to toggle between the different Cisco Nexus Dashboard services as needed.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Admin Console
Operational infrastructure standardization and toolchain unification directly lead to operational excellence and savings and free up resources for business innovation.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard services
● Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights services are being integrated into the Cisco Nexus Dashboard as native services as part of simplifying the overall consumption experience for our customers. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) consolidates management for multiple NX-OS‒based switches, bringing automation and monitoring for LAN, EVPN VXLAN, and SAN fabrics. Simply choose an operational mode (LAN, SAN), discover new and/or existing switches, and leverage the benefits of Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP), fabric monitoring, backup, faster provisioning and upgrades, and much more. NDFC supports Cisco (including Nexus, Catalyst®, and ASR routers) and third-party devices.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller consolidates management and automation for Cisco NX-OS LAN and SAN networks
● Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator allows operators to easily interconnect fabrics and/or clouds over any routed network, facilitating data-center and cloud migrations, as well as network extension across fabrics. Organizations can also centralize network and policy configurations and set up connectivity at scale. Besides rendering configurations defined in the template(s) to the local data center or cloud controller, it enables separation of fault domains, federation of data-center and cloud networks, and business resiliency at a global scale. Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator also enables end-to-end change-management workflows, centralized fabric management and upgrades, multicloud/hybrid-cloud connectivity, normalized segmentation, and security policies across the data center, SD-WAN, and enterprise branch and campus networks. For example, the SD-WAN integration provides application-aware SLA-based routing (policy-based path selection and QoS treatment) in the SD-WAN infrastructure used for interconnecting fabrics.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator automates fabric interconnect sand centralizes network configurations across Cisco ACI, Cisco NDFC, and cloud networks (through Cisco Cloud Network Controller)
● Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights allows operators to minimize downtime by turning hardware and software telemetry into insights (including anomalies and advisories) to identify potential issues and recommendations to fix them, gathering years of experience under a single network-operations platform. It can also take advantage of its analytics to learn more about sustainability, compliance, changes, and traffic behavior (including flow records, drop, congestion, latency, AI/ML RoCEv2, and more). It also minimizes risk by providing pre- and post-upgrade assistance and can enhance visibility by integrating tools from vendors such as VMware, Splunk, ServiceNow, Panduit, and many more. It incorporates a set of advanced alerting, baselining, correlation, and forecasting algorithms to provide a deep understanding into the behavior of the network. The Insights service and AppDynamics® are tightly integrated to pinpoint exactly where and when an application issue originated from a network perspective.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights monitors network health across Cisco ACI, Cisco NX-OS, and cloud networks
● Third-party applications: Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers an open API model with a rich suite of services for third-party developers to build applications. REST APIs allow third-party tools to authenticate and integrate with key services such as Nexus Dashboard Insights and Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator. Currently supported third-party integrations in the Nexus Dashboard ecosystem include ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM, Splunk SIEM, HashiCorp Terraform, and Red Hat Ansible.
Table 1. Features and benefits
Feature |
Benefit |
Single Sign-On (SSO) |
|
Multifactor authentication |
Reduce risk of static passwords and increase security with DUO supported multifactor authentication |
Minimizes maintenance and lifecycle management vs. siloed operations infrastructure |
|
Single pane of glass to manage the operations infrastructure |
A single pane of glass to manage Cisco Nexus Dashboard services and infrastructure |
Multi-Cluster support |
With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, operators seamlessly consume services they have access to through a single portal, even if they are running on different Nexus Dashboard clusters. |
Deploy Cisco Nexus Dashboard in any form factor—physical, virtual, or cloud*[1] |
|
Cloud-site onboarding |
Onboard and manage multicloud environments with site onboarding for Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud (requires Cisco Cloud Network Controller) |
Cisco Intersight integration |
Integrate to Cisco’s cloud operation platform to have access to features like Connected Technical Assistance Center (TAC), Sustainability Energy Sources, advisory updates and many others. |
Air-gap support |
Customers who can’t connect to the internet can utilize Insights’ advisory features to better identify risks to their infrastructure (including PSIRTs, defects, EoX notices, and field notices). |
Seamless operator experience powered by Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Too often the network operations team spends most of its time gathering troubleshooting data to triage and root cause an issue. The burden of tying together siloed insights from a fragmented operational toolkit often lies with the operations team. As the company’s data-center footprint extends from the on-premises data center to the cloud, and as modern application architectures become the de-facto standard, the operations team needs a unified operations toolchain with a seamless user experience to maintain and operate such complex environments.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard unifies these disparate toolsets and experiences for the operations teams to consume the rich and powerful capabilities of day-2 operations solutions and executes multi-fabric policies from a single pane of glass. Unnecessary handoffs between toolchains and dealing with multiple portals and credentials to get to troubleshooting data and insights have become a thing of the past. Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers a powerful and rich set of capabilities, such as:
● Single Sign-On (SSO): SSO powers the frictionless interaction between one or multiple Cisco Nexus Dashboard clusters and their hosted services. The operator logs in once and is able to switch seamlessly between services and also site controllers such as Cisco APIC, Cisco Cloud Network Controller, or Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller.
● Unified operations platform: The Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform is a powerful unified platform capable of scaling out horizontally to accommodate application needs. With a modern microservices infrastructure services stack on a clustered architecture, the same underlying platform can be used to cohost configuration automation capabilities (through Controller and/or Orchestrator) and telemetry/analytics (through Insights), reducing the burden of underlying software and hardware lifecycle maintenance.
● Sustainability: Nexus Dashboard Insights provides detailed reports on power consumption, energy sources, and emission rates for your fabrics based on location. Additional integrations with leading power-management vendors such as Panduit deliver new sustainability insights to enable our customers to gain real-time and historical insights into the power consumption of the IT equipment in their data center and estimate the energy footprint of their operations.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights’ Sustainability Report provides a persona-based dashboard giving RBAC-based access to the different services and sections within the Nexus Dashboard platform
● Common infrastructure services: Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides a host of common infrastructure services, such as common site onboarding, authentication domains, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), notification services, and API services.
● Flexible deployment options: Cisco Nexus Dashboard portfolio comprises physical, virtual, and cloud form factors, giving customers unprecedented flexibility while deploying their operations infrastructure and at the same time ensuring a common and unified operator experience through a single pane of glass.
● Programmable infrastructure: Third-party automation tools are critical to improving reporting workflows and responding to issues encountered by distributed workloads. Cisco Nexus Dashboard has built-in integrations with many third-party services such as ServiceNow, one of the most prevalent IT service management platforms. With the ServiceNow integrations, NetOps and DevOps teams can open and track tickets from within Nexus Dashboard. From one portal, operations teams get visibility into the status of open tickets, resulting in the automation of troubleshooting for faster resolutions across fabrics.
● SR-MPLS with Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator: With Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, SR-MPLS policies can be centrally automated across 5G telco cloud fabrics (central, regional, and edge data centers). Cisco Nexus Dashboard with Insights and Orchestrator services is the most comprehensive way to automate distributed data centers―overcoming the challenges of managing the infrastructure, applications, and data sources distributed over disparate locations.
With these services integrated in Cisco Nexus Dashboard, NetOps teams can achieve command and control over global network fabrics, optimizing performance and attaining insights into data-center and cloud operations.
For detailed platform and compatibility support, refer to: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/Website/datacenter/day2ops/index.html.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard |
Form factor |
Maximum Cluster scale* |
Sites supported |
Services/Integrations supported |
Release 2.2 |
Physical, virtual, and cloud form factor in cluster |
Up to 7 physical Up to 9 virtual |
Cisco ACI, NDFC, public cloud |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO), Nexus Dashboard Insights, ServiceNow, VMware vCenter |
Release 2.3 |
Physical, virtual, and cloud form factor in cluster |
Up to 7 physical Up to 9 virtual |
Cisco ACI, NDFC, public cloud |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO), Nexus Dashboard Insights, ServiceNow, VMware vCenter, AppDynamics, DNS |
Release 3.0 |
Physical, virtual, and cloud form factor in cluster |
Up to 7 physical Up to 9 virtual |
ACI, NDFC, Public Cloud |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO), Nexus Dashboard Insights, Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), ServiceNow, VMware vCenter, AppDynamics, DNS |
Release 3.1 |
Physical, virtual, and cloud form factor in cluster |
Up to 7 physical Up to 9 virtual |
ACI, NDFC, NX-OS (standalone), Public Cloud |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO), Nexus Dashboard Insights, Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), VMware vCenter, AppDynamics, DNS, Panduit |
For exact application versions and services co-hosting requirements, please refer to the compatibility matrix.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard software does not require an additional license and it is included with all Cisco Nexus 9000 switch tiered-license purchases. Service and feature access is based on the purchased licensing tier. Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is offered as part of Cisco Data Center Networking (DCN) Essentials. Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator is offered as part of DCN Advantage. Select Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights features are available in DCN Essentials and DCN Advantage licensing tiers. Previously only DCN Premier customers could access Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights features. This change allows all Cisco Nexus customers to access select Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights features and realize additional use cases and value for each tier.
Tuning the Data Center Networking (DCN) licensing tiers
For a guide to Cisco Nexus Dashboard ordering, please refer to the ordering guide.
Licensing: There are no additional licensing requirements for Cisco Nexus Dashboard. For a guide to ordering, please refer to the ordering guide.
Please refer to the sizing guide for physical and virtual cluster size guidelines.
Table 3. ND-CLUSTER-L4 (based on Cisco UCS M6 Server) ‒ Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform cluster hardware specifications
Hardware specifications |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform cluster node specifications |
Memory |
256 GB |
Processors |
1 |
Hard disk |
4* 2.4 TB each = 9.6 TB total |
SSD |
960 GB |
NVMe |
1.6 TB |
Power supply |
1050 Watts |
Software |
nd-dk9.3.1.1x.iso |
Table 4. Virtual form factor requirements
Hardware specifications |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard virtual node specifications |
Memory |
64 G |
Processors |
16 vCPUs |
Hard disk |
550 G application nodes (1536 G SSD/NVME required for Insights) |
SSD or NVMe |
3 TB for data nodes only |
Software |
nd-dk9.3.1.1x.qcow2 (KVM) nd-dk9.3.1.1x.ova (VMware ESXi 6.5/7/8) |
Table 5. Amazon AWS cloud form factor requirements per node of Cisco Nexus Dashboard
AWS native resources |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard cloud node specifications |
Amazon EC2 Instance Type |
m5.4xlarge (recommended), m4.4xlarge |
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) |
100G gp2 SSD, 300G gp2 SSD |
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) |
Standard S3 storage |
Marketplace link |
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-agdixxd5lgi6q |
Table 6. Microsoft Azure cloud form factor requirements per node of Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Microsoft Azure resource name |
Resource type |
Minimum requirement |
Instance type |
Compute |
Standard_D16s_v3 |
Azure management disk |
Storage |
OS disk 50 GB |
Azure data disk |
Storage |
Data disk [250/500 GB] |
Virtual networks |
Network |
2 |
Static public IP addresses |
Network |
3 |
Total public IP addresses (static public IP addresses and dynamic public IP addresses) |
Network |
3 |
Network security groups |
Network |
3 |
Application security groups |
Network |
3 |
Application gateways |
Network |
1 |
Virtual machines |
Compute |
3 |
Marketplace link |
Table 7. Supported site types and integrations on Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Cisco Nexus Dashboard |
Cisco ACI |
Cisco NDFC* |
Cisco NX-OS (standalone) |
Public cloud |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Release 2.2 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Release 2.3 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Release 3.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Release 3.1 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Insights Release 6.1 on Nexus Dashboard 2.X |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
Insights Release 6.2 on Nexus Dashboard 2.X |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Insights Release 6.3 on Nexus Dashboard 3.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Insights on Nexus Dashboard 3.1 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Orchestrator 3.7(2) on Nexus Dashboard 2.X |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Orchestrator 4.1(2) on Nexus Dashboard 2.X |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Orchestrator 4.2 for Nexus Dashboard 3.0 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Orchestrator for Nexus Dashboard 3.1 |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
VMware vCenter integration (onboarding) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
ServiceNow, Splunk |
|
All controllers |
||
HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Ansible |
|
For exact application versions and services co-hosting requirements, please refer to the compatibility matrix.
Part number |
Product description |
ND-CLUSTER-L4 |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform cluster based on Cisco UCS M6 server |
ND-NODE-L4= |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform node based on Cisco UCS M6 server |
ND-UNI-DK9-3.1 |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard software |
ND-VIRTUAL |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard virtual platform (OVA, KVM) |
Table 9. Cisco Nexus Dashboard third-party ecosystem
Partner |
Integration capability |
Applications link |
ServiceNow |
Ticketing automation for Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights anomalies and advisories, including the ability to filter specific categories and severity |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights App for ServiceNow Platform* |
ServiceNow incident visibility and management on Cisco Nexus Dashboard |
ServiceNow App for Cisco Nexus Dashboard* |
|
Visibility into network and application entities and policies defined on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator and business service mapping |
Cisco ACI/Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator App for ServiceNow Platform |
|
Splunk |
Real-time and historical monitoring (organization-specific KPIs and dashboards), troubleshooting, cross-tier correlation, and alerting automation for Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights App for Splunk Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights Add-on for Splunk |
HashiCorp Terraform |
Terraform provider to support Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator Automation |
Terraform Provider for Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator Automation |
Red Hat Ansible |
Ansible module to support Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator Automation |
Ansible Collection for Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator Automation |
VMware vCenter |
Virtual Machine telemetry and health visibility |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights, Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller integration |
Panduit |
Panduit iPDU monitoring for sustainability, energy consumption, cost and energy sources |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights integration |
Cisco Nexus Dashboard platform clusters have a 90-day limited liability warranty.
Cisco environmental sustainability
Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.
Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:
Table 10. Cisco Nexus Dashboard environmental sustainability
Sustainability topic |
Reference |
Information on product-material-content laws and regulations |
|
Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including products, batteries, and packaging |
Reference links to product-specific environmental sustainability information that is mentioned in relevant sections of this data sheet are provided in Table 11.
Table 11. Cisco Nexus Dashboard environmental sustainability
Sustainability topic |
Reference |
General |
|
Eco-design compliance (EU ErP Lot, etc.) Environmental certifications (EPEAT, Energy Star, etc.) |
Table AA. Product compliance Table BB. Product compliance or Platform features/benefits |
Power |
|
Idle, typical, or max product power Hardware-enabled energy features |
Table CC. Product specifications Table DD. Platform features/benefits |
Software-enabled energy features Power supply information Power calculator |
Table EE. Platform features/benefits Table FF. Product specifications Table GG. Product specifications |
Material |
|
Unit weight System weight (product + packaging) Recycled content |
Table HH. Product specifications Table II. Product specifications Table JJ. Product specifications |
Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.
Power your digital operations transformation with Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Are your operations teams tasked with delivering security, uptime, and business continuity on a complex data center infrastructure? Do they have the right tools that provide proactive change management and precise troubleshooting information tied together in a unified, easy-to-consume user experience? Start powering the transformation of the networking operations teams by standardizing on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard experience. Meet and exceed critical business mandates of agility and availability as you operate your secure, intent-based data center from Cisco Nexus Dashboard.
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As applicable, Cisco will provide support for the product as described here: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/doing_business/docs/cisco-software-support-service.pdf
Table 12. Document history
New or revised topic |
Described in |
Date |
First draft |
|
May 1, 2021 |
Second draft |
|
May 12, 2021 |
Third draft |
|
December 15, 2021 |
Fourth draft |
|
March 14, 2022 |
Fifth draft |
|
May 23, 2023 |
[1]Only Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service is currently available on Cisco Nexus Dashboard cloud form factor.
* Single software image available in Nexus Dashboard 3.1 and later.