You must have Cisco Nexus Dashboard cluster deployed and its fabric connectivity configured, as described in Cisco Nexus Dashboard Deployment Guide before proceeding with any additional requirements and the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service installation described here.


Orchestrator Release	Minimum Nexus Dashboard Release
Release 4.2(1) and later	Cisco Nexus Dashboard, Release 3.0(1)

Nexus Dashboard Networks

When first configuring Nexus Dashboard, you will need to provide two IP addresses for the two Nexus Dashboard interfaces—one connected to the Data Network and the other to the Management Network. The data network is used for the nodes' clustering and Cisco fabrics traffic. The management network is used to connect to the Cisco Nexus Dashboard GUI, CLI, or API.

Note

The two interfaces must be in different subnets.

Connectivity between the nodes is required on both networks with the round trip time (RTT) not exceeding 150ms for Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator. Other services running in the same Nexus Dashboard cluster may have lower RTT requirements and you must always use the lowest RTT requirement when deploying multiple services in the same Nexus Dashboard cluster. We recommend consulting the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Deployment Guide for more information.

When Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service is deployed in Nexus Dashboard, it uses each of the two networks for different purposes as shown in the following table:


NDO Traffic Type	Nexus Dashboard Network
Any traffic to and from: Cisco APIC Cisco NDFC Any other remote devices or controllers	Data network
Intra-cluster communication	Data network
Audit log streaming (Splunk/syslog)	Management network
Remote backup	Management network

Nexus Dashboard Cluster Sizing and Services Cohosting

Nexus Dashboard supports co-hosting of services. Depending on the type and number of services you choose to run, you may be required to deploy additional worker nodes in your cluster. For cluster sizing information and recommended number of nodes based on specific use cases, see the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Capacity Planning tool.

If you plan to host other services in addition to the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, ensure that you deploy and configure additional Nexus Dashboard nodes based on the cluster sizing tool recommendation, as described in the Cisco Nexus Dashboard User Guide, which is also available directly from the Nexus Dashboard GUI.

Note

This release of Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator can be co-hosted with other services on physical or virtual (ESX) Nexus Dashboard clusters only. If you are deploying the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service in a virtual (KVM) or cloud Nexus Dashboard cluster, you must not install other services in the same cluster.

Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Domain Name System (DNS)

The Nexus Dashboard nodes require valid DNS and NTP servers for all deployments and upgrades.

Lack of valid DNS connectivity (such as if using an unreachable or a placeholder IP address) can prevent the system from deploying or upgrading successfully.

Note

Nexus Dashboard acts as both a DNS client and resolver. It uses an internal Core DNS server which acts as DNS resolver for internal services. It also acts as a DNS client to reach external hosts within the intranet or the Internet, hence it requires an external DNS server to be configured.

Additionally, Nexus Dashboard does not support DNS servers with wildcard records.

Hardware Requirements For ACI Fabrics

Spine Switch Requirements

Multi-Site requires second generation (Cloud Scale) spine switches for intersite connectivity. All Cloud Scale spine switches supported by a given ACI release are supported by Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator.

Nexus 9000 first generation switches are not supported for Multi-Site intersite connectivity, but can still be used within a single fabric as long as that fabric is running an APIC release prior to 5.0(1).

Refer to the ACI-mode Switches Hardware Support Matrix for the complete list of supported spines for each release.

Leaf Switch Requirements

Multi-Site has no dependency on the fabrics' leaf switches and as such supports the same leaf switch models as the Cisco APIC. The full list of supported hardware is available in the ACI-mode Switches Hardware Support Matrix.

IPN Connectivity Across Sites

The following figure shows how spine switches supported with Multi-Site are connected to the intersite network.

You can choose to mix spine switches supported by Multi-Site with switches that are not supported within the same Cisco APIC fabric, but only the supported switches can connect to the intersite network as shown in the following figure.

Hardware Requirements For NDFC Fabrics

Border Gateways Requirements

The following table summarizes the hardware requirements for EVPN Multi-Site Architecture:

Cisco Nexus 9300 EX platform
Cisco Nexus 9300 FX platform
Cisco Nexus 9300 FX2 platform
Cisco Nexus 9300-GX platform
Cisco Nexus 9332C platform
Cisco Nexus 9364C platform
Cisco Nexus 9500 platform with X9700-EX line card
Cisco Nexus 9500 platform with X9700-FX line card

The hardware requirements for the site-internal BGP Route Reflector (RR) and VTEP of a VXLAN BGP EVPN site remain the same as those without the EVPN Multi-Site Border Gateways (BGW). This document does not cover the hardware and software requirements for the VXLAN EVPN site-internal network.

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