Cisco Intercloud Fabric Overview

Intercloud Fabric New Features and Enhancements

Software Compatibility

Supported Cloud Providers and VM Operating Systems

Cloud Provider Prerequisites

System Requirements

Scalability Limits

Important Notes

Prime Network Services Controller Important Notes

Do Not Use the service reinit Command

No Private Data Center Support in Prime Network Services Controller

Firewall Ports Requiring Access

Out-of-Band Operations on Cloud VMs Are Not Supported

Editing Firewall Interfaces

Searching with Special Characters

Open and Resolved Bugs

Using the Bug Search Tool

Open Bugs

Resolved Bugs

Related Documentation for Cisco Intercloud Fabric

Documentation Feedback

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Release Notes, Release 2.3.1

First Published: November 13, 2015

Last Updated: April 26, 2016

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Overview

Cisco Intercloud Fabric provides the architectural foundation for secure hybrid clouds, allowing enterprises to connect the enterprise data center easily and securely to the public cloud as needed and on demand. With a hybrid cloud, enterprises can combine the benefits of public and private clouds. Cisco Intercloud Fabric provides the following benefits:

- Provides a single point of management and control for virtual workloads across multiple public clouds

- Provides a choice of cloud providers, such as Amazon, Azure, and Cisco Intercloud Services – V

- Provides highly secure, scalable connectivity to extend private clouds to service provider clouds

- Enforces consistent network and workload policies throughout the hybrid cloud

- Enables workload mobility to and from service provider clouds for virtual workloads

For information on Cisco Intercloud Fabric or the Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform, see Cisco Intercloud Fabric.

Intercloud Fabric New Features and Enhancements

This release of Intercloud Fabric contains the following new features and enhancements:

- Intercloud Fabric Firewall (VSG) now supports:

- Cisco Intercloud Services – V

- Amazon

- Microsoft Azure

- Telstra - Cisco Intercloud Services - OpenStack

- VMware vCloud Director (VCD)

- Intercloud Fabric Router (CSR) now supports:

- Amazon

- Cisco Intercloud Services – V

- Telstra - Cisco Intercloud Services - OpenStack

- VMware vCloud Director (VCD)

- Support for the following providers:

- Cisco Intercloud Services – V

- Amazon AWS

- Microsoft Azure

- Telstra - Cisco Intercloud Services - OpenStack

- Intercloudnow

- iland

- Dualtec

- AWS provider feature support:

- Amazon EC2 Classic

- Amazon VPC

- ICF upgrade support from 2.2.1a to 2.3.1

- Additional Intercloud Fabric licensing support

- ESX 6.0 support

- Amazon AWS Direct Connect capabilities

- Microsoft Azure Regional VNET

Software Compatibility

In this release, Cisco Intercloud Fabric is supported on VMware vSphere. Cisco Nexus 1000V is not a prerequisite for Cisco Intercloud Fabric, but if used, must comply with the minimum version shown in the following table.

The following table lists the minimum software versions required for deploying Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Release 2.3.1.

Software Compatibility

Software

Minimum Version Required

Intercloud Fabric Router (CSR)

CSR/AWS

3.14.01

CSR/Cisco Intercloud Services – V

3.14.1.S

CSR/VCD

3.16.1

Virtual Switches

Cisco Nexus 1000V for VMware vSphere

4.2(1)SV2(2.1) and later

Hypervisors

VMware vSphere Client

5.1 (including update 1), 5.5, and 6.0

Supported Cloud Providers and VM Operating Systems

The following table identifies the cloud providers and VM operating system versions that are supported in Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Release 2.3.1.

Supported Cloud Providers

Supported Cloud Providers

Supported OS Version

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

- Amazon EC2 Classic

- Amazon VPC

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Microsoft Azure

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Cisco Intercloud Services – V

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Telstra - Cisco Intercloud Services - OpenStack

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Intercloudnow

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

iland

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Dualtec

- RHEL 6.0 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- CentOS 6.2 - 6.5: 64-bit versions

- Windows 2008 R2 SP1

- Windows 2012

- Windows 2012 R2

- SUSE Linux 11 SP2 and SP3

Cloud Provider Prerequisites

This section describes the cloud provider prerequisites for Cisco Intercloud Fabric.

Note

Supported OS versions for cloud providers other than AWS and Aure are subject to change. Check with the cloud provider for supported Cisco Intercloud Fabric OS versions.

- Create a provider account in the cloud provider.

- Certain ports must be open in the firewall to allow the Intercloud Fabric Extender to communicate with the Intercloud Fabric Switch. Port 443 must always be open. For a UDP tunnel, port 6644 must also be open. For a TCP tunnel, either ports 6644 and 6646, or port 443, can be used. Specify the choice of tunnel protocol and port when configuring the tunnel profile.

- TCP ports 22 and 443 must be open in the firewall that is outbound from the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller IP address to the cloud provider.

- Using a proxy on private cloud is not supported when Intercloud Fabric is being used to connect to public cloud.

System Requirements

The following tables identify the system requirements for installing Cisco Intercloud Fabric.

System Requirements

Requirement

Description

Intercloud Fabric

CPUs

8 vCPU (64-bit x86 CPU [VT-capable])

Network interface cards (vNICs)

1

RAM

20 GB

Disk

350 GB

Intercloud Fabric Extender

Memory

2 GB

CPU

2 vCPU

Disk

3 GB

Intercloud Fabric VSM

Memory

2 GB

CPU

1 vCPU

Disk

3 GB

Note

The virtual disk must be capable of at least 40 MB/s bandwidth.

Hypervisor Requirements

Requirement

Description

VMware

Version

5.1, 5.5, and 6.0, ESXi

Client Browser Requirements

Requirement

Description

Browser

Google Chrome 32.0 or later

Note:
We recommend that you use Google Chrome for Intercloud Fabric.

System Requirements for Provider Clouds

Provider/Model

Device

vCPU

Memory (GB)

Disk (GB)

AWS

c3.2xlarge

Intercloud Fabric Switch

8

15

20

c3.xlarge

Intercloud Fabric Router

4

7.5

8

m3.medium

Intercloud Fabric Firewall (VSG)

1

3.75

2

Azure

A3

Intercloud Fabric Switch

4

7

20

A3

Intercloud Fabric Firewall (VSG)

2

3.5

2

All Other Providers

Intercloud Fabric Switch

4

4

20

Intercloud Fabric Firewall (VSG)

1

3

3

Intercloud Fabric Router (CSR)

4

4

8

Note

For optimal performance, we recommend reserving extra system resources for Intercloud Fabric Director above the minimum system requirements listed in the preceding table. For more information, see "Reserving System Resources" in the Cisco Intercloud Fabric Getting Started Guide.

Scalability Limits

The following table lists the scalability limits for the Cisco Intercloud Fabric components.

Scalability Limits

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Components

Scalability Limits

Number of VMs per Intercloud Fabric

Not to exceed 1000

Number of Intercloud Fabric clouds per Intercloud Fabric

32

Number of VLANs per Intercloud Fabric cloud

16

Number of VMs per Intercloud Fabric cloud

100

Number of vNICs per Intercloud Fabric cloud

256

Number of Intercloud Fabric Firewalls (VSGs) and Intercloud Fabric Routers (CSR 1000Vs)

2 each

Important Notes

This section describes the important notes for using Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Release 2.3.1.

- Cisco Intercloud Fabric supports only the English version of vCenter.

- A Windows VM image that has been syspreped to certain cloud providers (such as Azure) cannot be migrated.

- Prior to the general installation of Cisco Intercloud Fabric, you must configure the Network Time Protocol (NTP) on ESXi so that its startup policy is set to "Start automatically if any ports are open, and stop when all ports are closed." In addition, verify that the set time on vCenter hosts is synchronized with NTP and on deployed VMs. For more information, see the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller 3.2 Quick Start Guide.

- Physical hosts in an enterprise data center must use the correct date and time. We recommend that you synchronize the host clock with an NTP server to ensure successful communication.

- Prior to Release 2.3.1, VMs created in Azure, either based on a template or moved from enterprise to Azure, may have two default gateway entries: one via the enterprise overlay interface and another for the Azure private network address space. This might cause unpredictable routing. For more information, see the Cisco Intercloud Fabric Troubleshooting Guide.

- When cloning a Linux virtual machine in VMware, new MAC addresses are assigned. This causes a MAC address mismatch between the VM settings and the Linux guest OS. If you encounter this situation, the following message is displayed:

The Guest OS either does not contain interface configuration for the VM NICs or the
interfaces are explicitly disabled.

For information on how to resolve the MAC address mismatch, see the VMware Knowledge Base.

- Azure multi-disk VM instantiation on an Azure cloud (from template or migration) depends on the number of attached disks. The maximum number of disks that can be attached to a VM varies according to the size of the VM. For example, you can attach only four disks to the Standard A2, but you can attach 32 disks to the Standard D14 and 64 disks to the Standard G5. For reference, see Click Here .

- Windows CVM instantiation fails on Azure, and the VM goes into the recovery console. After a set timeout, the VM exits from the recovery console and boots up. However, the PNSC rekey attempt times out before the Windows VM exits the recovery console and boots up. To avoid this problem, shut down the VM cleanly from inside the guest OS before you create a template.

- When deploying an Intercloud Fabric cloud by using the Intercloud Fabric wizard, in the Location field, choose a cloud provider location that matches your local time zone to avoid WAN delay and latency.

- While cloning an Intercloud Fabric cloud, you must not migrate the source virtual machine as well as the destination virtual machine as it will impact the cloning operation and any operations carried out on the destination virtual machine after migration.

- For the cloud provider Microsoft Azure, you must register the certificate with the Azure portal.

- Out-of-band operations are not supported in Intercloud Fabric. If you terminate a virtual machine from the cloud provider portal, the status is not reflected in the Intercloud Fabric GUI.

- Trunk ports are not supported in cloud virtual machines.

- Trunk ports are not supported in virtual machines that have been migrated to the cloud.

- In Microsoft Azure, when you terminate a virtual machine in the cloud, the virtual machine is terminated; however, the storage is not deleted from the image and the provider will charge you for the virtual machine. To delete the storage and the image, use the Intercloud Fabric GUI to delete the template used to create the virtual machine.

- Network Address Translation (NAT) functionality for the Intercloud Fabric Router (CSR 1000V) is available only if there is a default VPC in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

- During deployment of the Intercloud Fabric Router (CSR 1000V) in the cloud, inter-VLAN traffic might stop working between private and cloud virtual machines for VLANs that are not extended to the cloud. For private VLANs that are not extended, you must add routing on the data interface configured as the default gateway. If no data interface is configured as the default gateway, add one with one of the private VLANs that are not extended, and add routing for the remaining VLANs under that interface.

- If network connectivity between Intercloud Fabric and the cloud provider is slow, image upload operations, such as migrating a virtual machine, might fail. If the image is not uploaded within 12 hours, the operation fails and Intercloud Fabric tries to reupload the image.

- The cloud provider, Cisco Intercloud Services – V, requires execution of sysprep on the virtual machine image after VM migration. Execution of sysprep leads to certain configuration changes within your virtual machine. These changes include resetting the Windows Administrator password, removing the virtual machine from its associated domain, and other changes. To address these effects of sysprep execution, be aware of the following after migrating the virtual machine to the cloud provider:

1. The Windows password is reset to the name of the virtual machine that you enter in the VM name field in the Assign VM dialog box. (See "Assigning a Virtual Machine to a Virtual Data Center" in the Cisco Intercloud Fabric Getting Started Guide for more information.) If the name of the virtual machine is less than ten characters, the password is reset to the name of the virtual machine appended with the required number of 3s to reach the ten-character limit.

2. If the virtual machine was part of a domain, you must manually readd the virtual machine to the domain after the migration is complete and connectivity to the private network is up.

- Before you migrate a virtual machine from the Intercloud Fabric cloud to the enterprise, make sure that there is sufficient storage capacity in the enterprise for the virtual machine.

- Before you migrate a virtual machine from the Intercloud Fabric cloud to the enterprise, you must add the resource pool to the default computing policy. You can then select the resource pool you added in the Migrate VM Back on Premise window during migration.

Prime Network Services Controller Important Notes

The following topics provide important information for using Prime Network Services Controller:

- Do Not Use the service reinit Command

- No Private Data Center Support in Prime Network Services Controller

- Firewall Ports Requiring Access

- Out-of-Band Operations on Cloud VMs Are Not Supported

- Editing Firewall Interfaces

- Searching with Special Characters

Do Not Use the service reinit Command

In a Cisco Intercloud Fabric environment, do not enter the service reinit command on the Prime Network Services Controller CLI. The service reinit command reinitializes the Prime Network Services Controller databases and removes the existing configuration. You will need to manually remove any VMs and templates created through Prime Network Services Controller, from VM managers, or cloud providers.

No Private Data Center Support in Prime Network Services Controller

Prime Network Services Controller does not support private data center service nodes even though the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller 3.3 User Guide and online help describe how to configure and manage these items. The affected service nodes are ASA 1000V edge firewalls, enterprise CSR 1000V edge routers, enterprise VSG compute firewalls, Citrix NetScaler 1000V load balancers, and Citrix NetScaler VPX load balancers.

Also, Prime Network Services Controller does not support integration with Prime Performance Manager even though it is documented in the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller 3.3 User Guide and online help.

Firewall Ports Requiring Access

If Prime Network Services Controller is protected by a firewall, the following ports on the firewall must be open so that clients can contact Prime Network Services Controller.

Port

Description

22

TCP

80

HTTP

443

HTTPS

843

Adobe Flash

Out-of-Band Operations on Cloud VMs Are Not Supported

Out-of-band operations on cloud VMs are not supported. For example, if you terminate a cloud VM from a cloud provider portal, the status is not reflected in Prime Network Services Controller.

Editing Firewall Interfaces

We recommend that you do not edit the data interfaces of compute or edge firewalls. Changing the data interface via the Prime Network Services Controller GUI stops communication between the Cisco Nexus 1000V VEM link and the firewall, and thereby stops vPath traffic.

If you change the data interfaces of compute or edge firewalls via the Prime Network Services Controller GUI, make the appropriate configuration changes on the Cisco Nexus 1000V.

Searching with Special Characters

Searching for organization names does not work if the organization names include special characters, such as $.

Open and Resolved Bugs

The open and resolved bugs for this release are accessible through the Cisco Bug Search Tool. This web-based tool provides you with access to the Cisco bug tracking system, which maintains information about bugs and vulnerabilities in this product and other Cisco hardware and software products.

For more information about the Cisco Bug Search Tool, see the Bug Search Tool Help & FAQ.

Using the Bug Search Tool

You can use the Bug Search Tool to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release.

Procedure

Step 1

Go to Cisco Bug Search Tool.

Step 2

In the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password, and 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 Click Here .

Step 3

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

Step 4

To search for bugs in the current release:

1. In the Search For field, enter Cisco Intercloud Fabric 2.3(1) and press Enter. (Leave the other fields empty.)

2. 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 status, severity, modified date, and so forth.

Tip:   To export the results to a spreadsheet, click the Export Results to Excel link.

Open Bugs

The following are descriptions of the open bugs in Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Release 2.3.1. The bug ID links you to the Cisco Bug Search tool.

Bug ID

Headline

CSCuv03273

Validation of OpenStack provider account may fail.

CSCuv77368

When creating an Intercloud Link with VMware vCloud Director 5.5.4, the security rules are not applied to the vShield Edge Gateway and the exception "Security rule exceeded" is displayed.

CSCuw23850

Cloned functionality not supported on AWS Direct Connect Intercloud Link.

CSCuw67997

PNSC UI may not refresh until the user reloads the page.

CSCuw81285

Intercloud link deployment will fail if using an existing network.

CSCuw94080

Drives are mapped incorrectly after migration on a Windows multidisk in AWS.

CSCuw98456

ICS VM remains running on cloud if Intercloud Link deployment fails.

CSCuw98515

A Cisco Intercloud Fabric Switch (ICS) fails to register with Cisco PNSC, or the ICS registers but the site-to-site tunnel fails to come up due to a "bad certificate" error.

CSCux04062

After a Windows VM move from a local premise to a public cloud, the VM's disk is missing or an extra temporary disk storage is added.

Resolved Bugs

The following are descriptions of the resolved bugs in Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Release 2.3.1. The bug ID links you to the Cisco Bug Search tool.

Bug ID

Headline

CSCut19855

Inconsistencies arise with cVM when the number of NICs requested is greater than the number of NICs in the template.

CSCut49291

When rebooting an onboarded VM, the overlay interfaces change the eth numbers.

CSCut52453

A Windows VM on Amazon fails to instantiate if an Intel driver is not installed.

CSCut60405

After upgrading, you cannot SSH into the ICS from the VSM console.

CSCut80946

In Intercloud Fabric, the ICS/ICX per second CPU usage always displays as 100%.

CSCut85580

Adding the subinterface to VLAN management causes ICS VEM flapping.

CSCut91599

Switchover fails during an upgrade on Azure with an Intercloud Fabric link in HA mode, and the second Intercloud Fabric link does not upgrade.

Related Documentation for Cisco Intercloud Fabric

This section lists the documents used with Cisco Intercloud Fabric and available at the following URL:

Click Here

General Information

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Release Notes

Install and Upgrade

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Getting Started Guide

User Guides

Cisco Intercloud Fabric User Guide

Configuration Guides

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Configuration Guide

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Firewall Configuration Guide

Cisco vPath and vServices Reference Guide for Intercloud Fabric

Programming Guide

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Director REST API Guide

Troubleshooting and Alerts

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Troubleshooting Guide

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform

The documentation listed below is available for use with Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform at the following URL:

Click Here

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform Release Notes

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform Installation Guide

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform Administrator Guide

Cisco Intercloud Fabric Provider Platform Troubleshooting Guide

Cisco Nexus 1000V Documentation

Cisco Nexus 1000V for VMware vSphere

Cisco Virtual Security Gateway Documentation

Cisco Virtual Security Gateway

Cisco Prime Network Services Controller Documentation

Cisco Prime Network Services Controller

Cisco Cloud Services Router Documentation

Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V

Documentation Feedback

To provide technical feedback on this document, or to report an error or omission, please send your comments to: intercloud-fabric-doc-feedback@cisco.com.

We appreciate your feedback.

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

For information on obtaining documentation, using the Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST), submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see What's New in Cisco Product Documentation.

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