Contents

- Introduction

- Prerequisites

- ACI and RHV Integration Workflow

- Verification

1. Verify the created RHV domain and apic leader

2. Verify epg and assigned vlan

3. Verify connected host/hosts

4. Moquery’s for verification

5. Verify network on host

- Other Resources

Introduction:

Red Hat Virtualization is an end-to-end virtualization solution. This is a virtualization suite that enables network and system administrators to reduce the complexity of large deployments. The key components of RHV include the Red Hat Virtualization Hosts (RHVH), the Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHVM), and the Storage Domains.

RHVM is a server that provided management of datacenter and KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) cluster hosts, similar to vCenter.

RHVM is a physical compute KVM based hypervisors to deploy virtual machines.

From 3.1 onwards APIC supports RedHat Virtualization Integration. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) controller integrates with RHV and automates provisioning of Logical Networks on RHV. Together ACI and RHV enhance the network management capabilities of the platform.

This article is based on ACI software version 4.2(3n) and RHV manager/host software version 4.2

Prerequisites

Before starting RHV integration, make sure you have RHV Manager installed and pingable from APIC. And perform the following tasks on Red Hat Virtualization Manager:

1. Create a data center.

2. Create storage domains.

3. Create clusters.

4. Attach Red Hat Virtualization hosts to the clusters.

ACI and RHV Integration workflow:

Once the RHV datacenter is ready with one or more hosts connected, perform the following setup to integrate it with ACI fabric.

1. Create an AAEP and also assign it to the interface policy group created for leaf interfaces connecting to host.

Fabric --> Access Policy --> Policies --> Global --> Attachable Access Entity Profiles-->(Right Click) Create Attachable Access Entity Profile

2. VLAN pool used by the virtual machines to connect with ACI.

Fabric --> Access Policy --> Pools --> Vlan --> (Right Click) Create VLAN Pool

3. Create a RedHat VMM domain under the VMM integration and associate the VLAN pool and AAEP(Associated Attachable Entity Profile) created above.

Virtual Networking -->VMM Domain--> RedHat (Right Click)--> Create a RedHat Domain

4.

4. Add credentials for RedHat Virtualization Manger used by APIC to connected RHV-M.

5. Create an RHV controller with a name, ip address, datacenter and associate credentials created in above step.

6. APIC now should get connected to the RHV Manager and pulls inventory consists of hosts, VMs, and logical networks in the datacenter

7. Create a tenant, application profile, EPG and associate it with the above created RedHat Domain.

Resolution Immediacy: Pre-Provision ( pre-provision only supported as of 4.2(3n))

Deployment Immediacy: Immediate or On-demand

8. APIC pushes epg as a logical network with a label aci_<domainName> to RHV Manager and associate with all clusters in datacenter. Assign the label to host uplinks (one-time configuration)

10.

9. By Default, APIC will dynamically assign VLAN encapsulation from the associated pool. Assign the network to the VM to make the VM part of ACI EPG.

Verification:

1. Verify the created RHV domain and apic leader responsible to establish connection with RHV Manager

bgl-aci06-apic1# show redhat domain name rhv

Domain Name         : rhv

Virtual Switch Mode : rhev

Number of EPGs      : 1

Faults by Severity  : 0, 0, 0, 0

APIC Owner:

Controller    APIC      Ownership

------------  --------  ---------------

rhv-m         bgl-aci0  Leader

6-apic3

rhv-m         bgl-aci0  NonLeader

6-apic2

rhv-m         bgl-aci0  NonLeader

6-apic1

rhev:

Faults: Grouped by severity (Critical, Major, Minor, Warning)

rhev                  Type      Datacenter            Status    RHVHs  VMs    F

aults

--------------------  --------  --------------------  --------  -----  -----  -

--------------

10.197.204.33         rhev      BGLACI_FAB6           online    1      1      0

,0,0,0

bgl-aci06-apic1#

2. Verify associated epg and vlan assigned

bgl-aci06-apic1# show redhat domain name rhv epg

Encap: (P):Primary VLAN, (S):Secondary VLAN

Name                            Encap            AllocMode

------------------------------  ---------------  ----------

RHV|ap01|epg-1                  vlan-3505        dynamic

bgl-aci06-apic1#

3. Verify the connected hosts.

bgl-aci06-apic1# show redhat domain name rhv rhev 10.197.204.33

Hostname or IP      : 10.197.204.33

Datacenter          : BGLACI_FAB6

Status              : online

Last Inventory Sync : 2020-05-03 17:03:20

Last Event Seen     : -

Username            : admin@internal

Number of RHV Hosts : 1

Number of VMs       : 1

Faults by Severity  : 0, 0, 0, 0

Leader              : bgl-aci06-apic3

Hosts:

RHVH             VMs

---------------  --------

10.197.204.210   1

4. Below moquery's can also be used to verify the RHV integaration

-To verify connected Hosts/Hypervisors

moquery -c compHv

-To verify Controller parameters and operational status

moquery -c compCtrlr

-To verify  the vmm Domain

moquery -c vmmDomP

5. Verify network on host:

Following vrish commands can be used to verify VM networking on host (for linux bridges only)

- To list all the networks present on the host:

virsh# iface-list

Name                 State      MAC Address

---------------------------------------------------

lo                   active     00:00:00:00:00:00

on60f6acb34a7a4      active     3c:fd:fe:d6:00:dc

ovirtmgmt            active     2c:f8:9b:f8:18:1e

quarantine           active     3c:fd:fe:d6:00:dc

uplinkNetwork        active     3c:fd:fe:d6:00:dc

- List all the VM on the host

virsh # list

Id    Name                           State

----------------------------------------------------

1     VM1                            running

- Check the interface used to connect VM1. Here on60f6acb34a7a4 is the bridge pushed by ACI.

virsh # domiflist VM1

Interface  Type       Source     Model       MAC

-------------------------------------------------------

vnet0      bridge     on60f6acb34a7a4 virtio      56:6f:72:bd:00:03

- To dump bridge on60f6acb34a7a4 details,bond0.3505 is uplink interface of the bridge and will tag the VM traffic with ACI provided VLAN(3505 in this case).

virsh # iface-dumpxml on60f6acb34a7a4

<interface type='bridge' name='on60f6acb34a7a4'>

<bridge>

<interface type='vlan' name='bond0.3505'>

<link speed='20000' state='up'/>

<vlan tag='3505'>

<interface name='bond0'/>

</vlan>

</interface>

<interface type='ethernet' name='vnet0'>

<link state='unknown'/>

<mac address='fe:6f:72:bd:00:03'/>

</interface>

</bridge>

</interface>

Other Resources:

1) Cisco ACI for RedHat Virtualization Environments White Paper

2) Cisco ACI and Red Hat Virtualization Config Guide