Cisco Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation (VACS) Services is a software solution that automates the coordinated licensing, installation, and deployment of multiple virtual services in your datacenter to enable an easy and efficient setup of virtualized applications. Cisco VACS provides a fully customizable extended application container abstraction to simplify deploying and provisioning the virtual services. Cisco VACS allows you to define extended application container templates and to instantiate them through automated setup and provisioning of the underlying virtual components. Cisco UCS Director provides the management interface to deploy, provision, and monitor the Cisco VACS solution.

Cisco VACS provides you with a choice of ready-to-use application container templates that define the rules for deploying a collection of virtual machines (VMs) within a private network secured by a firewall. An application container is a set of virtual services such as virtual switches, routers, firewalls, and other network devices configured in a consistent manner to deploy different workloads. When you create and instantiate an application container template, Cisco VACS deploys VMs, and configures networks, the firewall, and virtual switches, and enables quick provisioning of network and security at the virtual layer.

After you install the Cisco UCS Director – Cisco VACS license and apply the Cisco VACS patch to the Cisco UCS Director, you can view the Cisco VACS solution under the Solutions > VACS Container tab.

If you select a deployed Cisco VACS application container, the following container-specific action buttons are available under Policies > Application Containers:

• Manage Service VM password

• View details

• View Reports

• Power on/off containers

• Add VMs

• Delete VMs

• Delete Container

• ERSPAN

• Firewall Policy

• Static NAT

• Open Console

Note

Effective Release 5.4STV3.0, parallel post container operations on an application container are blocked. You are allowed to perform only one post container operation per container at a time and you are not allowed to proceed to the next operation unless the earlier one has been completed. For information about the above operations, see the Cisco Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation Services Configuration Guide.

For more information on the preceding management actions, see the Cisco Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation Services Configuration Guide.

Note	For information on applying the Cisco VACS patch to the Cisco UCS Director, see the Applying the Cisco VACS Patch to the Cisco UCS Director.

Cisco UCS Director is a 64-bit appliance that uses the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) for VMware vSphere standard template:

Cisco UCS Director delivers unified, highly secure management for converged infrastructure solutions, that are based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.

Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and network layers through Cisco UCS to provide you with a comprehensive visibility and management capability. It supports NetApp FlexPod and ExpressPod, EMC Isilon, EMC VSPEX, EMC VPLEX, and VCE Vblock systems, which are based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.

Cisco UCS Director automates the provisioning of resource pools across physical, virtual, and baremetal environments. It delivers native, automated monitoring for health, status, and resource utilization. You can do the following using Cisco UCS Director:

• Create, clone, and deploy service profiles and templates for all servers and applications

• Monitor organizational usage, trends, and capacity across a converged infrastructure on a continuous basis, such as by viewing heat maps that show virtual machine (VM) utilization across all your data centers

• Deploy and add capacity to ExpressPod and FlexPod infrastructures in a consistent, repeatable manner

• Manage, monitor, and report on Cisco UCS domains and their components

• Extend virtual service catalogs to include physical infrastructures services

• Manage secure multitenant environments to accommodate virtualized workloads that run with nonvirtualized workloads

The Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM) is the control plane of the Cisco Nexus 1000V. It is deployed as a virtual machine.

Cisco VACS supports the installation of the VSM in a high-availability (HA) pair using the automated Cisco VACS installation.

The VSM, along with the VEMs that it controls, performs the following functions for the Cisco Nexus 1000V system:

• Configuration

• Management

• Monitoring

• Diagnostics

• Integration with VMware vCenter Server

The VSM uses an external network fabric to communicate with the VEMs. The VSM runs the control plane protocols and configures the state of each VEM, but it never forwards packets. The physical NICs on the VEM server are the uplinks to the external fabric. VEMs switch traffic between the local virtual Ethernet ports that are connected to the VM vNICs but do not switch traffic to other VEMs. Instead, a source VEM switches packets to the uplinks that the external fabric delivers to the target VEM.

A single Cisco Nexus 1000V instance, including dual-redundant VSMs and managed VEMs, forms a switch domain. Each Cisco Nexus 1000V domain within a VMware vCenter Server must be distinguished by a unique integer called the domain identifier.

A single VSM can control up to 250 VEMs.

While using the VSG, it can control up to 128 VEMS.

See the Cisco Nexus 1000V Resource Availability Reference for information about scale limits.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V architecture is shown in the following figure.

Figure 3. Cisco Nexus 1000V Architecture