Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller, Release 1.0(3i), Release Notes

Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller, Release 1.0(3i), Release Notes

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Publication Date: March 8, 2015

This document describes the features, caveats, and limitations for the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) software. For more information on specific hardware features, see the Cisco NX-OS Release 11.0(3i) Release Notes for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series ACI-Mode Switches. Additional product documentation is listed in the “Related Documentation” section.

Release notes are sometimes updated with new information about restrictions and caveats. See the following website for the most recent version of this document:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/application-policy-infrastructure-controller-apic/products-release-notes-list.html

Table 1 shows the online change history for this document.

Contents

This document includes the following sections:

• Introduction
• Installation Notes
• Upgrade Instructions
• Downgrade Instructions
• Compatibility Information
• Usage Guidelines
• Verified Scalability Limits
• New and Changed Information
• Caveats
• Related Documentation

Introduction

The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is an architecture that allows the application to define the networking requirements in a programmatic way. This architecture simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates the entire application deployment life cycle.

The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Fundamentals guide provides complete details about the ACI, including its two major components:

• Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
• ACI Fabric, including Cisco Nexus 9000 spine and leaf switches

The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Fundamentals guide also includes a glossary of terms that are used in the ACI.

Key features of the ACI include the following:

• Simplified automation with an application-driven policy model
• Common platform for managing physical, virtual, and cloud-based environments
• Centralized visibility with real-time, application health monitoring
• Operational simplicity, with common policy, management, and operation models across application, network, and security resources
• Open software flexibility for DevOps teams and ecosystem partner integration
• Scalable performance and secure multi-tenancy

ACI Fabric and Switches

A clustered replicated APIC appliance manages the ACI fabric. Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches can run with the ACI-compatible software to run in the leaf/spine fabric mode. These switches form a “fat-tree” network by connecting each leaf node to each spine node; all other devices connect to the leaf nodes.

Figure 1 shows the ACI Fabric with Cisco Nexus 9508, Cisco Nexus 9300 Series leaf switches, and the APIC.

Figure 1 ACI Fabric with Spine and Leaf Switches, and the APIC,

 

Installation Notes

• For installation instructions, see the Cisco ACI Fabric Hardware Installation Guide .
• For instructions on how to access the APIC for the first time, see the Cisco APIC Getting Started Guide.
• For the Cisco APIC Python SDK documentation, including installation instructions, see the Cisco APIC Python SDK Documentation.

Two installation egg files are needed for installation. You can download these files from a running APIC at the following URLs:

– http[s]://<APIC address>/cobra/_downloads/acimodel-1.0_3i-py2.7.egg

This is the SDK file.

– http[s]://<APIC address>/cobra/_downloads/acicobra-1.0_3i-py2.7.egg

This file includes the Python packages that model the Cisco ACI Management Information Tree.

Both files are required.

Note Installation of the SDK with SSL support on Unix/Linux and Mac OS X requires a compiler. For a Windows installation, you can install the compiled shared objects for the SDK dependencies using wheel packages.

Note The model package depends on the SDK package; be sure to install the SDK package first.

Upgrade Instructions

Follow this procedure when upgrading from a 1.0(2x) release to a 1.0(3x) release:

1. Upgrade the APIC controller software image.

2. After all APICs in the cluster are successfully upgraded, upgrade all the switches in the fabric.

Note The switches may need to be rebooted after upgrading (See CSCut32029).

Downgrade Instructions

Follow this procedure when downgrading from a 1.0(3x) release to a 1.0(2x) release:

1. Downgrade the APIC controller software image.

2. After all APICs in the cluster are successfully downgraded, downgrade all the switches in the fabric.

Note Switch models N9K-C9372PX, N9K-C9332PQ, and N9K-C9372TX are not supported for downgrading in the APIC 1.0(2x) or the Cisco Nexus 9000 11.0(2x) releases. If your fabric has these models, do not downgrade.

Compatibility Information

• Cisco APIC Release 1.0(3i) supports the hardware and software listed on the ACI Ecosystem Compatibility List and the software listed as follows:

– Cisco NX-OS Release 11.0(3i)

– Cisco AVS, Release 5.2(1)Sv3(1.3)

– Cisco UCS Manager software Release 2.2(1c) or later is required for the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect and other components, including the BIOS, CIMC, and the adapter

• The breakout of 40G ports to 4x10G on the N9332PQ switch is not supported in ACI-Mode.
• To connect the APIC (the controller cluster) to the ACI fabric, it is required to have a 10G interface on the ACI leaf. You cannot connect the APIC directly to the N9332PQ ACI Leaf.
• Cisco APIC Release 1.0(3i) supports the following firmware:

– 1.5(4e) CIMC HUU iso

– 2.0(3i) CIMC HUU iso

Usage Guidelines

This section lists usage guidelines for the APIC software.

• The APIC GUI supports the following browsers:

– Chrome version 35 (at minimum) on Mac and Windows

– Firefox version 26 (at minimum) on Mac, Linux, and Windows

– Internet Explorer version 11(at minimum)

– Safari 7.0.3 (at minimum)

Note Restart your browser after upgrading to 1.0(3i).

Caution A known issue exists with the Safari browser and unsigned certificates. Read the information presented here before accepting an unsigned certificate for use with WebSockets.

When you access the HTTPS site, the following message appears:
“Safari can’t verify the identity of the website APIC. The certificate for this website is invalid. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be an APIC, which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?”

To ensure that WebSockets can connect, you must do the following:

Click Show Certificate.
Select Always Trust in the three drop-down lists that appear.

If you do not follow these steps above, WebSockets will not be able to connect.

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• The APIC GUI includes an online version of the Quick Start guide that includes video demonstrations.
• The infrastructure IP address range must not overlap with other IP addresses used in the fabric for inband and out-of-band networks.
• The APIC does not provide an IPAM solution, so ensure that IP addresses are unique within a private network/ context.
• Press the Escape key twice (<Esc> <Esc>) to display APIC CLI command options.
• In some of the 5-minute statistics data, the count of ten-second samples is 29 instead of 30.
• For the following services, use a DNS-based host name with out-of-band management connectivity. IP addresses can be used with both inband and out-of-band management connectivity.

– Syslog server

– Call Home SMTP server

– Tech support export server

– Configuration export server

– Statistics export server

• Inband management connectivity to the spine switches is possible from any host that is connected to the leaf switches of the Fabric, and leaf switches can be managed from any host that has IP connectivity to the fabric.
• When configuring an AC (atomic counter) policy between two endpoints, and an IP is learned on one of the two endpoints, it is recommended to use an IP-based policy, and not a client endpoint based policy.

Verified Scalability Limits

Table 2 contains the maximum verified scale limits for a subset of ACI parameters for the Cisco ACI Release 1.0(3i) and Cisco Nexus 9000 Series ACI-Mode Switches, Release 11.0(3i). These values are based on a profile where each feature was scaled to the numbers specified in the table. The numbers in this table do not represent the theoretically possible ACI fabric scale.

Please contact your Cisco account representative to discuss your use-case or other ACI scale parameters that are not listed here.

New and Changed Information

This section lists the new and changed features in Release 1.0(3i), and includes the following topics:

• New Hardware Features in Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Release 1.0(3i)
• New Software Features in Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Release 1.0(3i)

Caveats

This section includes the following topics:

• Open Caveats
• Resolved Caveats
• Known Behaviors

Related Documentation

This section lists the product documentation for the Cisco APIC. Links to the documentation are available in the Cisco ACI Fabric Documentation Roadmap that is published here:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/1-x/roadmap/b_ACI_Fabric_Documentation_Roadmap.html

The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) website is here:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/application-policy-infrastructure-controller-apic/tsd-products-support-series-home.html

Hardware Documentation

Cisco Nexus 9336PQ ACI-Mode Switch Hardware Installation Guide

Cisco Nexus 9508 ACI-Mode Switch Hardware Installation Guide

This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the “Known Behaviors” section.