Understanding Cisco VTS
The Cisco Virtual Topology System (VTS) is a standards-based, open, overlay management and provisioning system for data center networks. It automates DC overlay fabric provisioning for both physical and virtual workloads.
Cisco VTS provides a network virtualization architecture and software-defined networking (SDN) framework that meets the requirements of multitenant data centers for cloud services. It enables a policy-based approach for overlay provisioning.
Cisco VTS automates complex network overlay provisioning and management tasks through integration with cloud orchestration systems such as OpenStack and VMware vCenter and abstracts out the complexity involved in managing heterogeneous network environments. The solution can be managed from the embedded Cisco VTS GUI or entirely by a set of northbound Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs that can be consumed by orchestration and cloud management systems.
Cisco VTS provides:
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Fabric automation
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Programmability
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Open, scalable, standards based solution
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Cisco Nexus 2000, 3000, 5000, 5500, 7000, and 9000 Series Switches. For more information, see Supported Platforms in Cisco VTS Installation Guide.
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Software forwarder (Virtual Topology Forwarder [VTF])
VTS performs the role of an overlay orchestrator in data-center networks. In this role, it manages configuration on the data center leaf and spine devices. The configuration of the devices is dependent on the type of overlay service that the Cisco VTS user intends to create. The Cisco VTS user in this context could either be manual users interfacing via GUI or APIs, or could be virtual machine managers like OpenStack or vSphere. Since the device configuration is derived from overlay service instances, Cisco VTS holds the ‘desired’ device configuration in its database.
Whenever, there is a change to the overlay service instances, it generates desired device configuration and applies them to the relevant set of devices. This is the prime functionality of an orchestrator. Changing any of the device configuration outside of Cisco VTS (For example, using CLI or other programmatic interfaces to the device), can result in service disruption. Hence Cisco VTS always reconciles its view of the device configuration and pushes that to the devices. Cisco VTS holds the master database of all device configuration in the fabric.
- Day0 underlay configuration—Cisco VTS is an overlay manager, but overlays cannot be established without an underlay. Underlay configuration on each leaf/spine device is unique. Typically, such underlay configuration is laid out even before Cisco VTS can manage the overlays. Assuming all the devices in the fabric are physically connected, the data center administrator establishes the underlay configuration by manually connecting to the devices and configuring them OR using an underlay manager to perform this. When Cisco VTS performs a scan of the fabric inventory and discovers the topology, it is expected that all the underlay configuration has been fully established. At this point, Cisco VTS treats all the pre-existing device configuration to be Day0 configuration. Day0 configuration is synced up from the devices and stored in VTS database as a baseline. All overlay service configuration is built on top of this day-0 device configuration.
- DayN underlay configuration—While Cisco VTS manages overlay specific device configuration, there is always the need for the fabric operators to customize device underlay configuration. Typical operations include physical link management, applying link specific features, managing underlay routing protocols and setting up the security. Recognizing this need, Cisco VTS supports the concept of 'device' templates. These are essentially device configuration parameters exposed to the VTS user using GUI/APIs. VTS users can customize device configuration using device templates and use that to create the consolidated device configuration.
- DayN overlay
configuration—While the overlay specific configuration pushed by Cisco VTS is
sufficient to establish overlays, every deployment may require some
customization around this configuration. Since VTS holds the master device
configuration, it is essential that any customization flows through Cisco VTS.
To address this, Cisco VTS supports the concept of a 'service' template.
Service templates allow the Cisco VTS user to extend the service specific
device configuration via GUI/API.
Note
Service templates always 'augment' the configuration. They cannot modify or remove configuration that is constructed by the VTS service layer.
We recommend that you do not modify device configuration outside of VTS. Doing so, can result in misconfiguration of devices and will result in service outage. If there is a real need to do so, you may follow one of the three models of device configuration to achieve the desired customization.