New and Changed Information

The following table provides an overview of the significant changes to the organization and features in this guide from the release the guide was first published to the current release. The table does not provide an exhaustive list of all changes made to the guide.

Table 1. Latest Updates

Release

New Feature or Update

Where Documented

4.2(2e)

First release of this document.

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Summary

The definition of a specific object on Cisco Cloud Network Controller (CCNC), named Cloud Context Profile (cloudCtxProfile), allows you to deploy a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) on AWS Cloud that is also known as Virtual Network (VNet) on Azure Cloud.

Before CCNC release 26.0(2), the creation of a Cloud Context Profile was done automatically, because of the association between a VRF instance and a specific Cloud region. This had two main implications:

  1. The name of the cloudCtxProfile object was hardcoded as VRFName-RegionName.

  2. It was only possible to deploy a single VPC (or VNet) mapped to a VRF instance in a single region.

CCNC release 26.0(2) introduces the capability of defining one or more cloud context profiles objects mapped to the same VRF instance, with the result of being able to deploy multiple VPCs (or VNet) for a given VRF instance in the same Cloud Region.


Note

A unique name for each tenant must now be explicitly assigned to every Cloud Context Profile defined.

This new functionality can be configured directly on CCNC or, as discussed in this document, it is also offered on Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator (NDO) starting from release 4.2(2) for all the Multi-Cloud deployments where NDO interacts with multiple CCNC instances.

Figure 1.
Overview Cloud Context Profile.
Figure 1 shows the logical mapping between VRF instance, Cloud Context Profiles, VPCs, and Region in the specific example of an AWS or Azure cloud.

Prerequisites

Before you follow the procedures described in this document, you must complete the following basic configuration tasks:

Creating Schema and Templates

Before you begin

The following guidelines apply when creating the schemas and templates using the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator:

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to your Cisco Nexus Dashboard and open the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service.

Step 2

Create a new schema:

  1. From the left navigation pane, choose Configure > Tenant Templates.

  2. Under the Application tab, click Add Schema.

    Figure 2.
    Create Schemas.

  3. In the schema creation dialog, provide the Name and optional description for the schema and click Next.

    By default, the new schema is empty, so you must add one or more templates.

Step 3

In the schema page, click Create New Template.

  1. In the Select a Template type window, choose ACI Multi-Cloud and click Add.

  2. Click Next to continue adding the template details.

    Figure 3.
    Create Cloud Application Template.

  3. In the left sidebar, provide the Display Name for the template.

  4. (Optional) Provide a Description.

  5. From the Select a Tenant drop-down list, choose the tenant for this template.

    Note

     

    The user account you are using to create a new schema must be associated with the tenant that you will add to the schema, otherwise the tenant will not be available in the drop-down list. For more information on importing the tenant, see Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator Configuration Guide for ACI Fabrics.

  6. In the template view page, click Next.

    Save the template after this initial configuration for extra options (such as site association) to become available.

    Figure 4.
    Create Template.

    Note

     

    Leave the default Deployment Mode to the Multi-Site option, to stretch the template across mutiple sites.

  7. Click Continue to finish adding the template to the schema.

Step 4

The next step is to assign the template to sites.

Deploy fabric configuration by deploying one template at a time to one or more sites. You must associate the template with at least one site where you want to deploy the configuration.

  1. In the template view page, click Actions and choose Add/Remove Sites.

  2. In the Add/Remove Sites <template> dialog, select one or more sites where you want to deploy the template and click Ok.

    Figure 5.
    Add Sites to the template.

Configuring multiple VPCs/VNets in the same VRF Instance

Before you begin

You must have the schema and template that is created and a tenant that is assigned to the template, as described in Creating Schema and Templates.

This section describes how to create a VRF instance, associate the VRF instance to a specific Cloud region and then define multiple VPC/VNets mapped to that VRF instance.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose the schema and template where you want to create the VRF instance.

Step 2

Create the VRF instance.

  1. In the main pane, choose Create Object > VRF.

    Figure 6.

  2. In the properties pane, provide the Display Name for the VRF instance.

  3. (Optional) Provide a Description.

Figure 7.
Creating the VRF.

Step 3

(Optional) Add one or more Annotations.

This allows you to add arbitrary key:value pairs of metadata to an object as annotations (tagAnnotation). Annotations provide any customization that you may require, such as descriptions, markers for personal scripting or API calls, or flags for monitoring tools or orchestration applications such as your Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator. Cisco APIC ignores these annotations and merely stores them with other object data, Cisco APIC also does not impose any format nor content restrictions.

Step 4

Select the site local template for the Azure/AWS site choose the VRF instance from the list of objects.

  1. Click on the Add Region and Cloud Context Profile.

    Figure 8.
    Add Cloud Context Profile.

  2. In the Select Region drop-down list, choose the region on which this VRF instance will be deployed.

    Add Cloud Context Profile.

  3. Click on the Add Cloud Context Profile and enter the following information.

    • Name—Enter the name for the cloud context profile, then click on Add CIDRs.

      Figure 9.

    • CIDR—Enter the VPC/VNET CIDR information. For example, 51.51.0.0/16.

      The CIDR includes the scope of all subnets that are going to be available to a VPC/VNET.

      Note

       

      The VNet CIDR information that you enter in this field cannot overlap with the infra pool. Verify that the CIDR information that you enter in this field does not overlap with the infra pool information that you entered in the Infra Subnet field in Step Deploying the Cisco Cloud Network Controller in Azure.

    • CIDR Type—Select Primary or Secondary. If this is your first CIDR, choose Primary for the CIDR type.

    • Add Subnet—Enter the subnet information, then click the check mark. For example, 51.51.1.0/24.

  4. Click Save to exit from the window.

    Figure 10.

  5. For our example use Add Cloud Context Profile and follow the Step c and Step d to add more cloud context profiles to the VPC/VNet in the same region.

    Figure 11.
    Update Cloud Context Profile.

Step 5

Click Ok to finish adding the cloud context profile to the VRF instance.

Figure 12.

Step 6

Click on the Deploy Template button at the top-right corner of the screen to deploy the schema to the sites.

Figure 13.
Deply the Template.

What to do next

You should see a message saying Deployment Sucessful at this point.