Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 Release Notes

Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 Release Notes

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Date: September 11, 2015

Current Release: Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0

This document describes the features, caveats, and limitations for Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) 2.0 software. Use this document in combination with documents listed in the “Related Documentation” section.

Note Release Notes are sometimes updated with new information about restrictions and caveats. See the following website for the most recent version of the Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 Release Notes:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns945/dynamic_fabric_automation.html

Table 1 shows the online change history for this document:

Contents

This document includes the following sections:

• Introduction
• System Requirements
• New and Changed Features
• Limitations
• Caveats
• Related Documentation
• Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

Introduction

Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) simplifies fabric management, optimize the fabric infrastructure, and automates provisioning across physical and virtual environments.

System Requirements

New and Changed Features

This section describes the new features introduced in the Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 major release and the associated additional new features introduced through subsequent Cisco NX-OS and Cisco Prime DCNM software upgrades. Without any further information, is at minimum Cisco Prime DCNM 7.1(1) or Cisco NX-OS 7.1(0)N1(1a) required (Cisco Nexus 5000/6000 Series Switches) to use the described features below.

Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 includes the following modular and independent functions for simplifying, optimizing, and automating the Data Center fabric environment:

1. Auto Configuration Enhancements:

a. Extended platform auto configuration support with Cisco NX-OS 7.2(0)D1(1) for the Cisco Nexus 7x00 Series switches with F3 linecards.

b. Border Leaf auto-configuration for Layer-3 Data Center Interconnect (DCI). This feature provides orchestration of Layer-3 DCI on the Border Leaf and Edge Router. It works in conjunction with DCNM to enable auto-configuration for extending Tenant configuration between two Fabrics or outside network (for example, internet, WAN and so on).

c. BorderPE support with Cisco Nexus 7x00 Series switches with F3 and Cisco NX-OS 7.2(0)N1(1). The BorderPE combines in a single box the MPLS PE and Border Leaf functionality with DCI auto configuration support.

d. Cisco Nexus 5500 VLAN auto-configuration—A command-line interface (CLI) trigger based VLAN auto-configuration for Nexus 5500 was extended to packet-based auto-config.

e. VLAN based auto-configuration for VDP—VDP based auto-configuration trigger formerly did only signal 24-bit Segment ID. With Cisco NX-OS release 7.1 it allows VDP also to signal the 12-bit VLAN ID.

f. Per-Port VLAN significance—Multi-Mobility Domain does allow to achieve per-Port VLAN significance, which does allow overlapping VLANs on a per-Port base.

g. Enhanced configuration profiles do support additional CLI parameters.

h. Universal Configuration Profile does allow refresh functionality, which allows incremental updates to already instantiated Network or VRF Tenant profiles.

i. Configuration Profile support has been added for Interface, VLAN, and VRF commands. Incrementally to the network profiles for auto-configuration, support has been extended to the auto-config profiles to VRF and interface.

j. Show commands for "fabric database" and "fabric access" were being enhanced with XML output.

2. Debug, Diagnostics, and Stability:

a. Redundancy and failover support to the Cisco Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) server by leveraging the Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) High Availability (HA) environment.

b. Debug enhancements to Power On Automatic Provisioning (POAP) include capture of the first few DHCP frames inbound on an interface and stored in the libpcap format for analysis by offline tools (for example, Network Analyzer).

3. UCS Director—The UCS Director has added support for DCI, multiple Mobility Domains and GUI enhancements for DFA, details of which may be gleaned from the Cisco UCS Director, 5.0 Release Notes or later.

4. DCNM—The DCNM has added support for DCI VRF auto-configuration, FCoE over FabricPath, and various REST API enhancements for DFA, details of which may be gleaned from the latest Cisco Prime DCNM Release Notes.

a. The Cisco Prime DCNM 7.1(1) has added support for two box DCI VRF auto-configuration, FCoE over FabricPath and various REST API enhancements. We recommend you to check the relevant Cisco Prime DCNM documentation for more information about REST API support.

b. The Cisco Prime DCNM 7.1(2) support selective High Availability (HA). The Cisco Prime DCNM appliance (OVA and ISO) allows you to selectively enable failover for certain applications (LDAP today) rather than forcefully applying it for all applications on Cisco Prime DCNM appliance.

c. The Cisco Prime DCNM 7.2(1) includes new POAP templates for the Cisco Nexus 7x00 Series switches with F3 linecards running Cisco NX-OS 7.2(0)D1(1) for Leaf, Border Leaf, BorderPE either deployed with or without VDC.

5. Scale Enhancements—Scale enhancements are covered in the DFA 2.0 Scalability Guide. Highlights of other scale enhancements include:

a. Support for up to 200K remote host routes on the Cisco Nexus 5600 and 6000 series is available with additional configuration when used as a Leaf in a DFA cluster.

b. Dynamic Virtual Port creation or deletion based on host detection during auto-configuration of a host to enhance the system scalability. Virtual Port (or logical interface) creation is limited to ports with active hosts.

6. Miscellaneous—Features include:

a. Support for Bidirectional PIM and PIM-SSM for the overlay in a DFA fabric.

b. VPC+ pairing support for Border Leaf nodes with Multicast enabled on Layer-3 (physical port, subinterfaces Layer-3 portchannel) and using vPC+ for Layer-2 external connectivity for Layer-3 unicast traffic.

c. Protection of resources (such as conversational caches) of Cisco Nexus 5500, 5600, and 6000 series Leaf of a DFA cluster against DoS attacks (such as nmap scans).

Limitations

The limitations of Cisco Dynamic Fabric Automation 2.0 are as follows:

• Cisco DFA requires a minimum of one multiprotocol Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route reflector.
• Every Cisco DFA node, which is intended to be managed by fabric management, needs to connect through either Ethernet out-of-band port (mgmt0) or via in-band (SVI with dedicated management VRF) to Cisco Prime DCNM.
• Console connection for management is recommended but not required for Cisco DFA.
• The Cisco Nexus 5500 Series switches support the following:

– Layer-2-only Cisco DFA Leaf.

– Layer-3 Anycast gateway via a Cisco Nexus 5600 / 6000 Cisco DFA Border Leaf switch.

– In Cisco NX-OS Release 7.0(2)N1(2), CLI-based auto configuration is the only supported configuration option for the Cisco Nexus 55xx switches in a Cisco DFA deployment.

Note The Cisco Nexus 55xx switches with supported software releases before Cisco NX-OS Release 7.0(2)N1(1) do not support auto-configuration.

• The Cisco Nexus 5500 Series switch does not support Segment ID.
• The Cisco Nexus 7x00 Series Switches acting as DFA Leaf, Border Leaf or BorderPE requires F3 Linecard. The DFA Spine is supported with F2, F2e and F3 Linecard.
• The BorderPE does not support legacy multicast mode, the BorderPE supports enhanced multicast DFA only. If a FabricPath SVI is explicitly configured with PIM in a DFA fabric, then such SVIs becomes a legacy SVI for multicast.
• Encapsulation is not supported on the transit devices, hence you need to manually add additional 42 bytes to any transit device if required.

Caveats

This section includes the following topics:

• Cisco Bug Search Tool
• Open Caveats
• Resolved Caveats in Cisco DFA 2.0

Cisco Bug Search Tool

The Cisco Bug Search Tool enables you to filter the bugs so that you only see those in which you are interested. In addition to being able to search for a specific bug ID, or for all bugs in a product and release, you can filter the open and/or resolved bugs by one or more of the following criteria:

• Last modified date.
• Status, such as fixed (resolved) or open
• Severity
• Support cases

For more information about how to use the Cisco Bug Search Tool, including how to set email alerts for bugs and to save bugs and searches, see Bug Search Tool Help and FAQ.

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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.

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To use the Cisco Bug Search Tool:

1. In your browser, navigate to the Cisco Bug Search Tool.

2. If you are redirected to a Log In page, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password and then, click Log In.

3. To search for a specific bug, enter the bug ID in the Search For field and press Enter.

4. To search for bugs related to a specific software release, do the following:

a. In the product field, choose Series/Model from the drop-down list and then enter the product name in the text field. If you begin to type the product name, the Cisco Bug Search Tool provides you with a drop-down list of the top ten matches. If you do not see this product listed, continue typing to narrow the search results.

b. In the Releases field, enter the release for which you want to see bugs. The Cisco Bug Search Tool displays a preview of the results of your search below your search criteria. You can mouse over bugs to see more content about a specific bug.

5. To see more content about a specific bug, you can do the following:

a. Mouse over a bug in the preview to display a pop-up with more information about that bug.

b. Click the hyperlinked bug headline to open a page with the detailed bug information.

6. To restrict the results of a search, choose from one or more of the following filters

Filter	Description
Modified Date	A predefined date range, such as last week or last six months.
Status	A specific type of bug, such as open or fixed.
Severity	The bug severity level as defined by Cisco. For definitions of the bug severity levels, see Bug Search Tool Help & FAQ.
Rating	The rating assigned to the bug by users of the Cisco Bug Search Tool.
Support Cases	Whether a support case has been opened or not.

Caveats

This section includes the open and resolved caveat record numbers for this release. Links are provided to the Bug Toolkit where you can find details about each caveat.

This section includes the following topics:

• Open Caveats
• Resolved Caveats in Cisco DFA 2.0

Related Documentation

• Software Downloads, Release, and General Information
• Reference Guides
• Install and Upgrade Guides
• Configuration Guides

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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