The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
This chapter covers these topics:
The Cisco IOS XRv Router is a Virtual Machine (VM) based platform running 32-bit IOS XR software with the QNX microkernel. This VM contains a single route processor (RP) with control plane functionality, and line card (LC) network interfaces with their associated functionality. It is a representation of the IOS XR software and operating system, including manageability, control plane features, routing and forwarding functionality. The Cisco IOS XRv Router is not an emulation of any physical router or hardware component.
The Cisco IOS XRv Router provides the features and usages described in this table.
Features | Description | ||
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SMUs and PIEs |
Provides full support for SMUs and PIEs. |
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Cisco IOS XR Software Feature Set |
Provides support for the Cisco IOS XR Software feature set, including the manageability, control plane, routing, and forwarding features.
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Multiple CPUs |
Supports up to eight CPUs. |
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Network Drivers |
Supports E1000 and VirtIO drivers to pass the traffic to support a wide array of hypervisors.
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The Cisco IOS XRv Router provides these virtualization benefits in a cloud environment.
Benefits | Description |
---|---|
Hardware independence |
The Cisco IOS XRv Router runs on a virtual machine. It can be supported on a x86 hardware that is supported by the virtualization platform. |
Resources sharing |
The resources used by the Cisco IOS XRv Router are managed by the hypervisor, and can be shared among VMs. The amount of hardware resources that the VM server allocates to a specific VM, can be reallocated to another VM on the server. |
Flexibility in deployment |
You can easily move a VM from one server to another. Thus, you can move the Cisco IOS XRv Router from a server in one physical location to a server in another physical location without moving any hardware resources. |
You can perform software configuration and manage the Cisco IOS XRv Router using these methods:
The physical resources of the Cisco IOS XRv Router are provided to the VM by the hypervisor, such that, from the Cisco IOS XRv Router perspective, it appears to the router as if the router is running on a bare metal x86 based machine. These resources are:
CPU and memory
Standard PC hardware, such as clock, Interrupt Request Controller (IRQ), and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus
Serial console and auxiliary ports
Management Ethernet interface
Network interfaces
An optional CD-ROM drive that can be mounted by the hypervisor and used to apply bootstrap configuration.
Note | The Cisco IOS XRv Router supports disk0 (default, formatted with QNX), harddisk (default, formatted with FAT32), disk1 (optional additional disk, user specified format), boot flash (default, formatted with FAT32) and NVRAM (default, formatted with FAT32). |
The Cisco IOS XRv Router platform image (figure above) is made up of these major components:
Cisco IOS XR PI binaries—The standard platform-independent Cisco IOS XR packages built in the same manner as that for other Cisco IOS XR platforms.
Platform layer—A virtual platform layer providing the minimal functionality for the PI code to run, including platform services, such as node ID and chassis management, and various capability and utility libraries.
Data plane—The software data plane providing a software packet path for Cisco IOS XR features, enabling forwarding and host stack to the router.
QNX—The standard Cisco IOS XR QNX kernel.
This section describes the components of the Cisco IOS XRv Router.
A VM is a software implementation of a computing environment in which an operating system or program can be installed and run. The VM typically emulates a physical computing environment, but requests for CPU, memory, hard disk, network, and other hardware resources are managed by a virtualization layer which translates these requests to the underlying physical hardware.
A hypervisor, also called a virtual machine manager (VMM), is a piece of computer software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs VMs.
A hypervisor enables multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host machine. While each operating system appears to have the dedicated use of the host's processor, memory, and other resources; the hypervisor controls and allocates only the required resources to each operating system and ensures that the operating systems (VMs) do not disrupt each other. A computer on which a hypervisor is running one or more VMs is defined as a host machine. Each VM is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems.
The Cisco IOS XRv Router is hypervisor agnostic. The demo image, provided without support, is suitable to deploy on a laptop or on a server that meets the requirements outlined below. For the production image in simulation mode, the supported hypervisors are VMWare ESXi 5.0 or later or QEMU 1.0. For the production image in production mode, VMWare ESXi 5.0 supports only a single CPU, but VMWare ESXi 5.1 (using VM version 9) supports two to eight CPUs. Additional details regarding VMWare ESXi and QEMU are as follows:
VMware ESXi 5.0 and later—VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are both bare-metal-embedded hypervisors from VMware's enterprise software for guest virtual servers that run directly on host server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.
QEMU 1.0—Quick EMUlator (QEMU) is a free and open-source software product that performs hardware virtualization. QEMU is a hosted virtual machine monitor. The QEMU emulates central processing units through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of device models, enabling it to run a variety of unmodified guest operating systems. It also provides an accelerated mode for supporting a mixture of binary translation (for kernel code) and native execution (for user code), same way that VMware Workstation and VirtualBox do. QEMU can also be used for CPU emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to be run on another.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel, which QEMU can use to improve performance. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extension.
The Cisco IOS XRv Router interfaces behave the similar way as those on hardware-based Cisco routers. These interfaces function as follows:
The supported interfaces are Management Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
Interface port numbering from 0 and up to a maximum of 128 interfaces (including Management Ethernet interface) are supported. The maximum interfaces count depends on the hypervisor used.
The first interface 0 is reserved for the Management Ethernet interface and subsequent interfaces become the Cisco IOS XRv Router data interfaces.
The Cisco IOS XRv Router interfaces map to virtual network interface card (vNIC) interfaces on the VM.
For more information, see the Mapping the Cisco IOS XRv Router Network Interfaces to vNICs
The Cisco IOS XRv Router packaging includes these images:
Demo Locked Image (iosxrv-demo-<version>.tar)
Demo Locked Image with Crypto (iosxrv-k9-demo-<version>.tar)
Production Capable Image (iosxrv-<version>.tar)
Production Capable Image with Crypto (iosxrv-k9-<version>.tar)
Images | Modes | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Demo Locked Image and Demo Locked Image with Crypto Support |
Demo Locked: A portable, downloadable VM that is hamstrung to limit its usefulness, but enables a number of internal and external use cases including Cisco IOS XR training and familiarization, demonstrations, sales tool, and early field trial (EFT) for control plane features. |
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Production Capable Image and Production Capable Image with Crypto Support |
Production: Provides a platform for the Cisco IOS XR based virtualized route reflector (vRR). |
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Simulation: Provides large-scale, control-plane network simulations. |
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Demo Unlocked: Provides a platform for Cisco IOS XR training and familiarization, demonstrations, sales tool, and early field trial (EFT) for control plane features. Transition the Demo Unlocked image to Simulation or Production mode with the purchase of appropriate license from Cisco. |
Call Home provides an email-based notification for critical system policies. A range of message formats are available for compatibility with pager services or XML-based automated parsing applications. You can use this feature to send an email to Network Operations Center, or use Cisco Smart Call Home services to generate a case with the Technical Assistance Center (TAC). The Call Home feature delivers alert messages containing information about the Cisco IOS XRv instance such as the configuration and any syslog messages that are generated. The Call Home feature can deliver alerts to multiple recipients referred to as Call Home destination profiles. Each profile includes configurable message formats and content categories. A predefined destination profile is provided for sending alerts to the Cisco TAC, but you also can define your own destination profiles. When you configure Call Home to send messages, the appropriate CLI show command is executed and the command output is attached to the message.
If you have a service contract directly with Cisco Systems, you can register your devices for the Smart Call Home service. Smart Call Home analyzes Call Home messages sent from your devices, provides background information and recommendations.
Continuous health monitoring and real-time diagnostic alerts of the device.
Analysis of Call Home messages from your device; generates an Automatic Service Request with the detailed diagnostic information and routes it to the appropriate TAC team.
Secure message transport directly from your device or through a downloadable Transport Gateway (TG) aggregation point.
Web-based access to Call Home messages and recommendations, inventory and configuration information for all Call Home devices. Provides access to associated field notices, security advisories and end-of-life information.
For more information, see Smart Call Home.
Implementing Smart Licensing
Smart Licensing is a cloud-based, software license management solution that enables you to automate time-consuming, manual licensing tasks. The solution allows you to easily track the status of your license and software usage trends. Smart Licensing helps simplify three core functions:
Configure Licenses Using Smart Licensing
Smart Licensing components are packaged into the IOS XRv full image. The https client required for configuring the Smart Call Home is packaged into the IOS XRv k9sec PIE or fullk9 image. By default, Smart Licensing mode is disabled. Use the steps described here to enable Smart Licensing.
On successful registration, the device will receive an identity certificate. This certificate is saved on your device and automatically used for all future communications with Cisco. Every 30 days, Smart Licensing will automatically renew the registration information with Cisco. If registration fails, an error will be logged. Additionally, license usage data is collected and a report is sent to you every month. If required, you can configure your Smart Call Home settings such that sensitive information (like hostname, username and password) are filtered out from the usage report.
Note | Once Smart Licensing mode is enabled, all CLIs related to the traditional licensing mode are disabled. |
You must have purchased the product for which you are adding the license. When you purchase the product, you are provided with a user name and password to the Cisco Smart Software Manager portal, from where you can generate the product instance registration tokens.
You must configure the Smart Call Home feature on Cisco IOS XRv product instance. For more information, see Registering for Smart Call Home.
1. Login tohttps://tools.cisco.com/rhodui/index
2.
admin
3.
configure
4.
license smart enable
5. Use the commit or end command.
6.
admin
7.
license smart register idtoken
token_ID
Command or Action | Purpose | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Step 1 | Login tohttps://tools.cisco.com/rhodui/index | Get a token
from the Cisco portal using the link. You must log in to the portal using a
Cisco provided username and password. Once you have generated the token, select
Copy
hyperlink to copy the token or download the token to a text file. The token is
used to register and activate a device, and assign the device to a virtual
account.
| ||
Step 2 |
admin
Example:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router# admin
|
Enters administration EXEC mode. | ||
Step 3 |
configure
Example:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router(admin)# configure
|
Enters administration configuration mode. | ||
Step 4 | license smart enable
Example: RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router(admin-config)#license smart enable RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router(admin-config)#show config Building configuration... !! IOS XR Configuration 5.2.0.19I license smart enable end | Enables basic Smart Licensing. Use the no form of this command to disable Smart Licensing and revert to the traditional or strict mode of licensing. | ||
Step 5 | Use the commit or end command. |
commit—Saves the configuration changes and remains within the configuration session. | ||
Step 6 |
admin
Example:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router# admin
|
Enters administration EXEC mode. | ||
Step 7 | license smart register idtoken
token_ID
Example: RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router(admin)#license smart register idtoken NmE1Yzg0OWMtYmJ4 license smart register: Registration process is in progress.Please check the syslog for the registration status and result | Use the token ID procured in step 1 to register your device. |
You can use the Cisco Smart Software Manager to:
After enabling Smart Licensing, you can use the show commands to verify the default Smart Licensing configuration. If any issue is detected, take corrective action before making further configurations.
1.
admin
2.
show license status
3.
show license register-status
4.
show license entitlement
5.
show license pool
6.
show license cert
7.
show license features
8.
show license ha
9.
show license all
10.
exit
11.
show call-home smart-licensing statistics
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router#show call-home smart-licensing statistics Success: Successfully sent and response received. Failed : Failed to send or response indicated error occurred. Inqueue: In queue waiting to be sent. Dropped: Dropped due to incorrect call-home configuration. Msg Subtype Success Failed Inqueue Dropped Last-sent (GMT-07:00) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ENTITLEMENT 2 0 0 0 2014-04-24 18:24:34 REGISTRATION 1 0 0 0 2014-04-25 03:53:57 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 1 0 0 0 2014-04-23 19:21:21 RENEW 1 0 0 0 2014-04-23 19:21:11 DEREGISTRATION 1 0 0 0 2014-04-25 03:31:35
In general, your registration is automatically renewed every 30 days. Use this option to make an on-demand manual update of your registration. Thus, instead of waiting 30 days for the next registration renewal cycle, you can issue this command to instantly find out the status of your license.
You must ensure that the following conditions are met to renew your smart license:
1.
admin
2.
license smart renew
{auth |
id}
1.
admin
2.
license smart deregister
Command or Action | Purpose | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
Step 1 |
admin
Example:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:router# admin
|
Enters administration EXEC mode. | ||
Step 2 | license smart deregister
Example: RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:IMC0(admin)#license smart deregister license smart deregister: Success License command "license smart deregister " completed successfully. | Cancels the
device registration, and sends it into a 30-day evaluation mode. All Smart
Licensing entitlements and certificates on the platform are removed.
|
The Smart Licensing workflow is depicted in this flowchart.
For enabling Smart Licensing, see Enable Smart Licensing
IP features—Supports a wide range of IPv4 and IPv6 services and routing protocols such as IPv4 unicast services, IPv6 unicast services, IPv4 Multicast services, IPv4 and IPv6 equal-cost multipathing (ECMP), IPv4 and IPv6 load balancing, Cisco Discovery Protocol, IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
Layer 3 routing protocols—Supports routing protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol Version 4 (BGPv4), Open Shortest Path First Version 2 (OSPFv2) and Version 3 (OSPFv3), and Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) Protocol.
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) features—Supports MPLS features such as MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP), Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), Diffserv Aware Traffic Engineering (TE), MPLS Traffic Engineering control plane (RFCs 2702 and 2430), MPLS forwarding and MPLS load balancing.
Network Management—Supports features like Enhanced CLI, XML interface and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) support.
Software Maintenance Update (SMU)— Supports applying fixes for software defects between releases.
Note |
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