Introduction

Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) is a Virtual Network Functions Manager (VNFM), which performs lifecycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).

The Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) promotes agility, flexibility, and programmability in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments, and offers comprehensive automated lifecycle management capabilities. By design, Cisco ESC is built as an open and a modular system. It provides a single point of control to manage all aspects of VNF lifecycle for generic virtual network functions (VNFs) in a dynamic environment. Drawing on industry standards and open APIs, you can control the full lifecycle of all of your virtualized resources, whether using Cisco or third-party VNFs, allowing you to choose best-of-breed industry solutions.

As part of the Cisco Orchestration Suite, ESC is packaged with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and Cisco NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) bundle. This is available within Cisco Solutions such as Cisco Managed Services Accelerator (MSX).
As a standalone product, ESC is available as a Virtual Network Function Manager bundled with several Cisco VNFs such as VPN, vRouter and many others.

Supported Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM)

ESC supports lifecycle management of VNFs on OpenStack, VMware vCenter, vCloud Director, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and so on. For more details, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

New Features and Enhancements in 5.1

This section describes the features added in Cisco Elastic Services Controller Release 5.1.

ESC GEO HA Support—ESC now supports configuring GEO in Active/Active High Availability. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.
Deploying Brownfield VMs—ESC supports deploying brownfield VMs on OpenStack. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
ESC Multi-VIM Type Support—ESC supports deploying to different VIMs from a single ESC instance. ESC supports OpenStack, CSP and vCD types of multi-VIM.
Switching VNF Monitoring Between Local MONA and D-MONA—ESC now supports switching of VNF monitoring from local MONA to a D-MONA and D-MONA to Local MONA monitoring deployed within the same VIM connector. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
Consistent Ordering of Resource Values for Scaling—ESC enables specifying resources such as ip address, mac address or day0 configuration variables in a consistent manner in the deployment data model. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
Custom Script NETCONF Notification—ESC custom scripts enable NETCONF notifications. For more information, see Custom Script section in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
OAUTH 2.0 Authentication—ESC ETSI supports OAuth 2.0 authentication calls from ETSI to the NFVO. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller NFV MANO User Guide.

ESC Documentation Update—Updates to the ESC 5.1 documentation:
- VNF upgrade deployment and failure scenarios—The VNF upgrade documentation is updated with the VNF upgrade deployment and failure scenarios in an existing deployment. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
- CSP upgrade—CSP In-service upgrade documentation is updated with the steps to perform the In-service upgrade of the ESC HA Active/Standby Nodes in CSP. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.
- CSP 2100 variable list is added to the documentation. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

Cisco Elastic Services Controller Bugs

For a complete list of open and resolved bugs for this release, use the Cisco Bug Search tool.

Open Bugs

The table below lists the open issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.1 release.

Table 1. Open Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.1
Bug ID	Description
CSCvs66486	Service stuck in INERT state when recovery attempted downstream up update and failover
CSCvs47450	Vim connector status can fail to be updated on AA follower nodes

Resolved Bugs

The table below lists the resolved issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.1 release.

Table 2. Resolved Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.1
Bug ID	Description
CSCvs19637	AA HA log level settings are not honored on local failover
CSCvr78476	The follower ESC node has etsi process in dead state during local AA to Geo AA upgrade
CSCvq58303	When A/S HA fails over, and VIM is unreachable, VIM failure notification is not sent out
CSCvr74850	VIM connector creation notifications can fail to reach NB
CSCvr58636	When failover happens during VM recovery, both service and VM can become stuck in inert state
CSCvq65416	ESC passwd generation no longer generates a password using escadm command
CSCvr37485	VM_ALIVE can be declared before VM_RECOVERY_COMPLETE if VM enters recovery while deploying
CSCvr43709	VNF in failed state cannot be deleted or redeployed
CSCvq69905	ETSI Instantiate VNF Req using OOB Port fails with error: illegal reference address_id
CSCvr25741	VM_ALIVE may not be generated for all VMs when in-flight deployment is resumed after ESC restart
CSCvr28616	Successful OS VIM connector creation may not generate VIM_CONNECTION_STATE event

Cisco Bug Search Tool

Bug Search Tool (BST), the online successor to Bug Toolkit, is designed to improve our customers' effectiveness in network risk management and device troubleshooting.

BST allows partners and customers to search for software bugs based on product, release, and keyword, and aggregates key data such as bug details, product, and version. The service has provision to filter bugs based on credentials to provide external and internal bug views for the search input.

To use the BST to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release:

Procedure

Step 1

Go to http://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch.

Step 2

At the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password; then, click Log In. The Bug Search page opens.

Note

If you do not have a Cisco.com username and password, you can register for them at http://tools.cisco.com/RPF/register/register.do.

Step 3

To search for a specific bug, enter the bug ID in the Search For field and press Return.

Step 4

To search for bugs in the current release:

In the Search For field, enter a keyword and press Return. (Leave the other fields empty).

When the search results are displayed, use the filter tools to find the types of bugs you are looking for. You can search for bugs by modified date, status, severity, and so forth.

Tip

To export the results to a spreadsheet, click the Export All to Spreadsheet link.

See Bug Search Tools & Resources on Cisco.com. For more details on the tool overview and functionalities, check out the help page, located at http://www.cisco.com/web/applicat/cbsshelp/help.html

Accessibility Features in Cisco ESC

For a list of accessibility features in Cisco ESC 5.1, see Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) on the Cisco website, or contact accessibility@cisco.com.

All product documents are accessible except for images, graphics, and some charts. If you would like to receive the product documentation in audio format, braille, or large print, contact accessibility@cisco.com.

Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.1 Release Notes

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