Introduction

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Virtual Edge is a hypervisor-independent distributed service virtual machine (VM) that is specifically designed for Cisco ACI. It leverages the native distributed virtual switch that belongs to the hypervisor. Cisco ACI Virtual Edge runs in the user space, operates as a virtual leaf, and is managed by Cisco APIC.

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is supported as a vLeaf for Cisco APIC with the VMware ESXi hypervisor. It manages a data center defined by the VMware vCenter Server. If you use Cisco AVS, you can migrate to Cisco ACI Virtual Edge; if you use VMware VDS, you can run Cisco ACI Virtual Edge on top of it.

The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is an architecture that allows the application to define the networking requirements in a programmatic way. This architecture simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates the entire application deployment lifecycle. Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) is the software, or operating system, that acts as the controller.

This document describes the features, issues, and limitations for the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge software. Use this document with the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Release Notes, Release 4.2(7).

For more information about this product, see "Related Content."

Note: 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.

Date

Description

March 16, 2021

Release 2.2(7a) became available.

New Software Features

There are no new software features in this release.

Changes in Behavior

There are no changes in behavior in this release.

Open Issues

Click the bug ID to access the Bug Search tool and see additional information about the bug. The "Exists In" column of the table specifies the 2.2(7) releases in which the bug exists. A bug might also exist in releases other than the 2.2(7) releases.

Bug ID

Description

Exists in

CSCvj58344

When control channel (OpFlex) from Cisco ACI Virtual Edge to the physical leaf is down, any port that attaches and then detaches before OpFlex comes back will remain in Cisco ACI Virtual Edge indefinitely.  No functional impact since the actual port has already gone away.

2.2(7a) and later

Resolved Issues

Bug ID

Description

Exists in

CSCvu98508

The OpFlex channel is down (discovering), as shown by the "vemcmd show opflex" command:

Status: 12 (Active)

Channel0: 0 (Discovering), Channel1: 12 (Active)

Channel1 uptime(D:H:M:S): (2:10:29:3)/Sat Jun 13 20:29:55 2020

...

Infra vlan: 3967

FTEP IP: 10.255.0.32

Switching Mode: LS

Encap Type: VXLAN

...

2.2(7a)

CSCvx12068

In Cisco ACI Virtual Edge release 2.2(5g), all of the "vemcmd dpa dump xxx" commands fail with the following error:

Error opening fifo (2), exiting

2.2(7a)

CSCvx55175

OpFlex channels were stuck in "Send functionality" on one leg of the vPC on all vPC nodes after completing an upgrade. The channels were able to recover very slowly on their own.

cisco-ave:~$ vemcmd show opflex

Status: 12 (Active)

Channel0: 10 (Send functionality), Channel1: 12 (Active)

Channel1 uptime(D:H:M:S): (0:5:20:59)/Tue Mar 16 23:57:07 2021

Note: If OpFlex was up on both legs before, then the data-plane should not be affected for the existing attached ports when one of the OpFlex channels later gets stuck in "Send functionality."

2.2(7a)

Known Issues

Click the bug ID to access the Bug Search tool and see additional information about the bug. The "Exists In" column of the table specifies the 2.2(7) releases in which the bug exists. A bug might also exist in releases other than the 2.2(7) releases.

Bug ID

Description

Exists in

CSCvg87091

When moving a port with vMotion—and some external factors, such as network or storage failure occur—the port detaches on the source host. If the port is actively sending packets, it re-attaches immediately.  For a silent host, the port remains detached until it sends some traffic.

2.2(7a) and later

CSCvh06525

When doing a bulk vMotion of 50 or more ports, the ports take additional time to come up and start forwarding traffic. We see delays of about 30 seconds to two minutes for the very last port to come up when doing vMotion of 300 ports. Some ports forward traffic much earlier as they are in the front of the vMotion queue.

2.2(7a) and later

CSCvj59097

If a bridge domain multicast is configured with optimized flood and is moved by vMotion, the subscriber to another policy group that is another VPC or other top-of-rack pair can cause loss of reception of up to the maximum configured querier interval time.

2.2(7a) and later

CSCvj74270

Traffic loss is seen on VMs when disconnecting and reconnecting Cisco ACI Virtual Edge VM NICs from VMware vCenter.

2.2(7a) and later

CSCvq63041

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge—when not part of Cisco ACI Virtual Pod—fails to come up. In the kernel logs, we see logs similar to the following one, showing that it was blocked for more than 2 minutes:

Jul 21 22:09:26 localhost kernel: INFO: task jbd2/dm-21-8:3051 blocked for more than 120 seconds.

Or you see logs similar to the following ones, in which the writes were blocked for more than 8 minutes:

Jul 21 22:01:47 localhost systemd[1]: Started Process Monitoring and Control Daemon.

Jul 21 22:09:26 localhost systemd-journal[3700]: Permanent journal is using 16.0M (max allowed 594.7M, trying to leave 892.0M free of 5.4G available

2.2(7a) and later

Limitations and Restrictions

General

L3 Multicast is not supported on bridge domains with endpoints after AVE.

Hypervisor Availability

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is available only on the VMware hypervisor.

VMware vSphere Support

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is supported only on VMware vSphere 6.0 and later versions.

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Deployment

The server where you install Cisco ACI Virtual Edge must have an Intel Nehalem CPU or later. You also must set the cluster Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) to a Nehalem CPU or later. See the knowledge base article Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (1003212) on the VMware web site.

We recommend that you install only one Cisco ACI Virtual Edge virtual machine (VM) on each host.

Removing Cisco ACI Virtual Edge or the ESXi host from the VMware vCenter and then adding it back in is not supported. If you do that, Cisco ACI Virtual Edge loses password, infra VLAN, IP address, and other key configurations. You should instead delete the original Cisco ACI Virtual Edge and deploy a new one.

After you deploy Cisco ACI Virtual Edge, if the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge VM is moved across VMware vCenter, all the configurations that you made during deployment are lost.

Management Interface IP Address

The Cisco ACI Virtual Edge management interface must have an IPv4 address. It can have an additional IPv6 address, but you cannot configure it with only an IPv6 address.

VMware vSphere vMotion Support

VMware vSphere vMotion is supported for endpoints, but not supported for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge itself.

Note: After you migrate VMs using cross-data center VMware vMotion in the same VMware vCenter, you may find a stale VM entry under the source DVS. This stale entry can cause problems, such as host removal failure. The workaround for this problem is to enable "Start monitoring port state" on the vNetwork DVS. See the KB topic "Refreshing port state information for a vNetwork Distributed Virtual Switch" on the VMware Web site for instructions.

Features Not Supported for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge with Multipod

The following features are not supported for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge with multipod:

·       Storage vMotion with two separate NFS in two separate PODs

·       ERSPAN destination in different PODs

·       Distributed Firewall syslog server in different PODs

Features Not Supported for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge when It Is Part of Cisco ACI vPod

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is not supported for the following features when it is part of Cisco ACI vPod:

·       VMware vSphere Proactive HA

·       SPAN and ERSPAN

·       Subnets configured under endpoint group EPGs

Pre-provisioning Not Supported for EPG Resolution Immediacy

When you set EPG resolution immediacy, Cisco ACI Virtual Edge does not support pre-provisioning, which downloads a policy to a switch before the switch is installed.

The process vemfwd Always runs at 100% of CPU

The Cisco ACI Virtual Edge process vemfwd always runs at 100% of CPU. This is by design; Cisco ACI Virtual Edge always runs at a high CPU on one core to accommodate the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK).

False Memory Fault in VMware vCenter

The Cisco ACI Virtual Edge VM can trigger a false memory fault in VMware vCenter. This is a cosmetic issue. For performance reasons, the latency sensitivity of the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge VM is set to high. This setting is known to trigger false positives in VMware vCenter.

See the following article on the VMware website: Memory usage alarm triggers for certain types of Virtual Machines in ESXi 6.x (2149787).

Permission Denied for some Files on vem-support with Admin Login

When you log in as an administrator, you may be denied some files when you enter a vem-support command. However, you can get permission if you log in as root.

Brief Delay Possible When Switching EPG from Native to AVE Mode

Changing the switching mode from Native to AVE (Cisco ACI Virtual Edge) on an EPG requires changing the underlying switching platform from regular VMware DVS to Cisco ACI Virtual Edge. It also requires moving all the associated ports from DVS to Cisco ACI Virtual Edge.

This operation requires reprogramming of the port group associated with that EPG. That in turn requires a VMware vCenter operation. This operation may take a few seconds to complete and for ports to show up in forwarding state on the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge switching platform. The length of time depends on the VMware vCenter load as well as the number of endpoints that reside on the EPG that is being moved from Native to AVE mode.

LACP Policy Not Applied on Port Channel

When a Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) policy is applied as a vSwitch policy for the VMM domain, the LACP policy is applied only to the VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) uplinks. However, it is not applied to the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge port channel.

This is expected behavior. Cisco ACI Virtual Edge does not support LACP on its uplinks because VDS does not support it for its virtual Ethernet (vEth) interfaces. So, the VMM port channel policy is applied only for the VDS uplinks.

Fault Raised After Process Crash Regardless of When Crash Occurred

A fault for an invalid port group is raised on Cisco ACI Virtual Edge downgrades earlier than 2.0(1a). In Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Release 2.0(1a), a new port group, outside-cloud, is created for the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge VMM. When Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is downgraded to pre-2.0(1a) releases, the port group is removed from Cisco APIC but not from VMware vCenter.

To avoid this fault, manually delete the port group outside-cloud from the VMware vCenter if you have an existing Cisco ACI Virtual Edge domain and you are downgrading from Cisco APIC 4.0(1h) or later.

Compatibility Information

This section lists virtualization compatibility information for the Cisco APIC software.

·       For a table that shows the supported virtualization products, see the ACI Virtualization Compatibility Matrix.

·       For information about Cisco APIC compatibility with Cisco UCS Director, see the appropriate Cisco UCS Director Compatibility Matrix document.

·       If you use Microsoft vSwitch and want to downgrade to Cisco APIC Release 2.3(1) from a later release, you first must delete any microsegment EPGs configured with the Match All filter.

·       This release supports the following additional virtualization products:

Product

Supported Release

Information Location

VMware ESXI hypervisor

6.0 and later versions.

N/A

Cisco APIC

4.2(7)

Cisco APIC and ACI Virtual Edge Support Matrix

Virtualization interoperability

4.2(7)

Cisco ACI Virtualization Compatibility Matrix

Compatibility and Upgrade and Downgrade Considerations

Support Matrix

The Cisco APIC and ACI Virtual Edge Support Matrix is an interactive tool that enables you to choose a Cisco APIC version and view the compatible Cisco ACI Virtual Edge and VMware vSphere releases.

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Upgrade Method

You must use the Cisco ACI vCenter plug-in to upgrade Cisco ACI Virtual Edge. See the chapter “Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Upgrade” in the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Installation Guide, Release 2.2(x) for upgrade instructions.

Number of IP Addresses when Upgrading Cisco ACI Virtual Edge

If you use static or DHCP IP pools and want to upgrade Cisco ACI Virtual Edge, ensure that you have enough IP addresses. There must be more IP addresses in the static or DHCP pools than there are in the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge service virtual machines in the data center in VMware vCenter. Otherwise, the upgrade of the new Cisco ACI Virtual Edge will fail.

Scalability

Scalability information about Cisco ACI Virtual Edge is available in the Verified Scalability Guide for Cisco APIC, Release 4.2(6), Multi-Site, Release 3.1(1), and Cisco Nexus 9000 Series ACI-Mode Switches, Release 14.2(6). The 4.2(6) release of the document applies to this release.

Related Content

See the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) page for the documentation.

The documentation includes installation, upgrade, configuration, programming, and troubleshooting guides, technical references, release notes, and knowledge base (KB) articles, as well as other documentation. KB articles provide information about a specific use case or a specific topic.

By using the "Choose a topic" and "Choose a document type" fields of the APIC documentation website, you can narrow down the displayed documentation list to make it easier to find the desired document.

You can watch videos that demonstrate how to perform specific tasks in the Cisco APIC on the Cisco Data Center Networking YouTube channel.

Temporary licenses with an expiry date are available for evaluation and lab use purposes. They are strictly not allowed to be used in production. Use a permanent or subscription license that has been purchased through Cisco for production purposes. For more information, go to Cisco Data Center Networking Software Subscriptions.

The following table provides links to the related documentation:

Document

Description

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Installation Guide, Release 2.2(x)

Provides installation, upgrade, and migration information for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge.

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Configuration Guide, Release 2.2(x)

Provides configuration information for Cisco ACI Virtual Edge.

Cisco ACI Virtual Edge Health Status

Provides information for monitoring health of Cisco ACI Virtual Edge, including viewing and troubleshooting faults.

Documentation Feedback

To provide technical feedback on this document, or to report an error or omission, send your comments to apic-docfeedback@cisco.com. We appreciate your feedback.

Legal Information

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