Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release Notes, Release 3.0.0

This document describes the features, system requirements, limitations, and caveats in the Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release 3.0.0.

Online History Change

 

Table of Contents

Introduction.. 3

Features. 3

Supported NXOS Versions. 4

New Features. 5

Open and Resolved Bugs. 5

Usage Guidelines. 6

Limitations. 7

Device Support Matrix. 7

Scale Information.. 7

System Requirements. 8

Supported Web Browsers. 8

Upgrading to Release 3.0.0.. 8

Related Documentation.. 8

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request. 9

 

Introduction

Visibility into application traffic has traditionally been important for infrastructure operations to maintain security, troubleshooting, and compliance, and to perform resource planning. With the technological advances and growth in cloud-based applications, it has become imperative to gain increased visibility into the network traffic. Traditional approaches to gain visibility into network traffic are expensive and rigid, making it difficult for managers of large-scale deployments.

Cisco Nexus Data Broker with Cisco Nexus Switches provides a software-defined, programmable solution to aggregate copies of network traffic using SPAN or network taps for monitoring and visibility. As opposed to traditional network taps and monitoring solutions, this packet-brokering approach offers a simple, scalable and cost-effective solution well-suited for customers who need to monitor higher-volume and business-critical traffic for efficient use of security, compliance, and application performance monitoring tools.

Cisco Nexus Data Broker also provides management support for multiple disjointed Cisco Nexus Data Broker networks. You can manage multiple Cisco Nexus Data Broker topologies that may be disjointed using the same application instance. For example, if you have five data centers and want to deploy an independent Cisco Nexus Data Broker solution for each data center, you can manage all five independent deployments using a single application instance by creating a logical partition (network slice) for each monitored network.

Features

Cisco Nexus Data Broker 3.0.0 provides the features from the previous Cisco Nexus Data Broker releases listed below. For a list of newly added features specific to this release, see New Features:

■        Support for entry of a VLAN range when creating a filter.

■        Ability to clone filters and connections.

■        Configure multiple ports for Edge span and Edge tap.

■        Ability to assign multiple filters to a connection.

■        Ability to configure both allow and deny filters for the same connection.

■        Enable time stamp tagging using PTP on Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches.

■        Display flow and port statistics for devices in the Cisco Nexus Data Broker main user interface.

■        Display flow statistics per connection and for each device within the connection.

■        Inter-switch link (ISL) utilization information available in the topology diagram and in the connection path.

■        Enable packet truncation on input ports on Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches.

■        Scalable topology for Test Access Point (TAP) and Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) port aggregation.

—      Support for Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

■        Q-Q to tag input source TAP and SPAN ports.

■        Symmetric load balancing.

■        Support for MPLS tag stripping.

■        Connections matching monitoring traffic based on Layer 1 through Layer 4 information.

■        Support for Layer 7 filtering for HTTP traffic.

■        The ability to replicate and forward traffic to multiple monitoring tools.

■        Reaction to changes in the TAP/SPAN aggregation network.

■        Security features, such as role-based access control (RBAC), and integration with an external Active Directory (AD) using RADIUS or TACACS for authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA).

■        End-to-end path visibility, including both port and flow level statistics for troubleshooting.

■        Robust Representational State Transfer (REST) API and a web-based GUI for all functions.

■        Support for Cisco Plug-in for OpenFlow, version 1.0.

■        Support for Cisco NX-API mode configuration on the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

Note: Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches support OpenFlow mode only. They do not support NX-API mode.

■        Device addition using Device name.

■        Inline monitoring and redirection for security use cases.

■        Limit Local Authentication Fallback.

The following features require NXOS 7.0(3)|2(2a) or later:

■        Configure matching on HTTP methods and redirect traffic based on that with NX-API.

■        MPLS tag striping on the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

■        OpenFlow support for the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 9300 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3064 switch

—      Cisco Nexus 3048 switch

■        Q-in-Q on  the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

Cisco Nexus Data Broker enables you to:

■        Classify SPAN and TAP ports.

■        Add monitoring devices to capture network traffic.

■        Filter which traffic should be monitored.

■        Redirect packets from a single or multiple SPAN or TAP ports to multiple monitoring devices through delivery ports.

■        Restrict which users can view and modify the monitoring system.

■        Connect to Cisco onePK agents for which Cisco onePK devices have been configured only  in Centralized deployment model.

Supported NXOS Versions

NXOS Releases supported in OpenFlow mode:

■        6.0(2)XX(X) and later on the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switches

■        7.0(3)I2(2a) and later on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

■        7.0(3)I3(1) and later on Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

NXOS Versions supported in NX-API mode:

■        7.0(3)I2(2a) and later on the following:

—      Cisco Nexus 3100 Series switches

—      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches

■        7.0(3)I3(1) and later for Cisco Nexus 3200 Series switches

New Features

Cisco Nexus Data Broker 3.0.0 contains the following new features:

■        New and improved web user interface

■        Cisco onePK Plugin is removed and all auxillary functions in Openflow mode is now supported only through Cisco NXAPI.

■        Integration with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) for:

—      Setting up SPAN destination ports in Cisco ACI leaf switches

—      Setting up SPAN sessions in Cisco ACI for monitoring

—      Filter SPAN traffic based on EPGs (End Point Groups) defined in Cisco ACI

—      Synchronization of SPAN sessions for consistency

—      Query leaf switches and ports for SPAN destination and SPAN session configurations

■        Added Cisco APIC cluster information for all SPAN configurations in Cisco ACI

■        Automatic ingress drop for Edge-SPAN and Edge-TAP interfaces

■        Configurable option to block Rx traffic (ingress) from any monitoring tool

■        Configurable option to block Tx traffic from Edge-SPAN and Edge-TAP ports

■        QinQ support for In-line traffic redirection

■        Default out-of-box Match IPv4 filter

■        Simplified TLS setup and configuration for administrators

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.

Note: You must have a Cisco.com account to log in and access the Cisco Bug Search Tool. if you do not have one, you can register for an account.

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

This section includes the following topics:

■        Resolved Bugs in this Release

■        Open Bugs for this Release

Resolved Bugs in this Release

Table 1 lists the descriptions of resolved caveats in Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release 3.0.0. You can use the bug ID to search the Cisco Bug Search Tool for details about the bug.

Table 1 Resolved Bugs in Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release 3.0.0

Open Bugs for this Release

Table 2 lists the descriptions of open bugs in Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release 3.0.0. You can use the bug ID to search the Cisco Bug Search Tool for details about the bug.

Table 2 Open Bugs in Cisco Nexus Data Broker Release 3.0.0

 

Usage Guidelines

This section lists the usage guidelines for the Cisco Nexus Data Broker.

■        HTTP access on port 8080 is disabled by default. Only HTTPS access on port 8443 is enabled. If required, HTTP can be enabled by editing the tomcat.xml file. Please refer to Cisco Nexus Data Broker Configuration Guide, Release 3.0.0 for details.

■        The Cisco Nexus Data Broker assumes inter-switch link interfaces are configured to be layer 2 switch ports, and these interfaces are set to switchport trunk by default.

■        It is required to use JRE version 1.8.0_45 for latest security fixes.

■        Cisco Nexus 9000 switches managed by Cisco Nexus Data Broker 3.0.0 must have LLDP features enabled. Disabling LLDP may cause inconsistencies and require devices to be deleted and re-added.

■        When removing devices from the Cisco Nexus Data Broker, the device associated port definitions and connections should be removed first. Otherwise, the device might contain stale configurations created by the Cisco Nexus Data Broker.

■        Before upgrading NDB from Release 3.0 to 3.1, ensure that the domain name is not configured in the switch. If the domain name is configured, remove the domain name using the no ip domain-name domain­_name_string command and save the configuration.

■        The switch description should not start with a number and the only special characters allowed are an underscore (_) or a hyphen (-). If the switch descriptions start with a number or if it contains special characters that are not allowed, change the description and synchronize the changes to NDB.

■        Before upgrading Cisco NDB, do not change the switch configuration on the port description. Change in switch configuration can result in failure during NDB version upgrade or downgrade.

■        For Cisco NX-API devices, there is a 2 minute or more wait after the Cisco Nexus Data Broker configuration operations (port definitions, connections creation/deletion, and stats) to reload the device and avoid any inconsistency between the Cisco Nexus Data Broker and the device.

■        The TLS KeyStore and TrustStore passwords are sent to the Cisco Nexus Data Broker so it can read the password-protected TLS KeyStore and TrustStore files only through HTTPS.

./xnc config-keystore-passwords [--user {user} --password {password} --url {url} --verbose --prompt --keystore-password {keystore_password} --truststore-password {truststore_password. Here default URL to be - https://Nexus_Data_Broker_IP:8443

Limitations

■        The same Cisco Nexus Data Broker instance can support either the OpenFlow or NX-API configuration mode, but it does not support both configuration modes.

Device Support Matrix

Table 4 lists the supported Cisco Nexus Data Broker software for the various Cisco Nexus switches.

Table 3 Cisco Nexus Data Broker Application Device Support Matrix

 

Scale Information

Table 4 lists the scale limits for Cisco Nexus Data Broker.

Table 4 Scale Limits

System Requirements

Table 5 lists the system requirements for Cisco Nexus Data Broker 3.0.0.

Table 5 System Requirements per Deployment Size

 

Supported Web Browsers

The following web browsers are supported for Cisco Nexus Data Broker 3.0.0:

■        Firefox 45.x and later

■        Chrome 45.x and later

Note: Javascript 1.5 or a later version must be enabled in your browser.

Upgrading to Release 3.0.0

This section explains the supported method for upgrading your release.

Related Documentation

For more information, see the related documents at the following link:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/nexus-data-broker/tsd-products-support-series-home.html

New Documentation

There are no new documents for this release.

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 at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html.

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