Table Of Contents
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center,
Version 2.xDifferences between Cisco VMDC 2.x and VMDC 1.1
Integrated Compute Stack (ICS)
Multi-Tenant Support, Separation, and Security
Service Orchestration Integration
Workload Mobility and Disaster Recovery Capability
About Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center,
Version 2.xLast Updated: November 3, 2011
Building Architectures to Solve Business Problems
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center,
Version 2.x
Introduction
The Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center (VMDC) solution 2.x provides design and implementation guidance for enterprises planning to deploy private cloud services and service providers building virtual private and public cloud services. The Cisco VMDC 2.x solution integrates various Cisco and third-party products that are part of the cloud computing ecosystem.
This document includes the following topics:
•Compact and Large PoD Details
•About Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program
Solution Overview
Cisco VMDC 2.x is a validated architecture that delivers a highly available, secure, flexible, and efficient data center infrastructure. It provides the following benefits:
•Reduced time to deployment—Provides a fully tested and validated architecture that accelerates technology adoption and rapid deployment.
•Reduce risk—Enables enterprises and service providers to deploy new architectures and technologies with confidence.
•Increased flexibility—Rapid, on-demand, workload deployment in a multi-tenant environment due to a comprehensive automation framework with portal-based resource provisioning and management capabilities
•Improved operational efficiency—Integrates automation with multi-tenant resource pool (compute, network, and storage), improves asset use, reduces operational overhead, and mitigates operational configuration errors.
Differences between Cisco VMDC 2.x and VMDC 1.1
Cisco VMDC 2.x is the second phase of Cisco's Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center solution. The details of the first phase of the solution (VMDC 1.1) are described at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns414/ns742/ns743/ns1050/landing_vmdc.html
Table 1 summarizes the high level differences:
Architecture Overview
Modular Design
Cisco VMDC 2.x provides a scalable solution that can address the needs of smaller, as well as larger, enterprise and service provider data centers. This architectural consistency enables providers to select the design that best suits their immediate needs, while providing a solution that can scale to meet future needs without re-tooling or re-training staff. This scalability with a hierarchical design based on two modular building blocks: PoD and ICS.
Point of Delivery (PoD)
The modular design starts with a basic infrastructure module called a PoD. A PoD allows providers to add network, compute, and storage resources incrementally. The Cisco VMDC 2.x architecture specifies two PoD designs: Compact and Large.
The PoD concept offers a number of benefits:
•Predefined logical units
•Simplified capacity planning
•Ease of new technology adoption
•Fault isolation
•Consistent and efficient operation
Integrated Compute Stack (ICS)
The second building block in Cisco VMDC 2.x is a generic Integrated Compute Stack (network, storage, and compute) based on existing models, such as the VCE Vblock and Cisco-NetApp FlexPod offerings. The VMDC 2.x architecture is not limited to a specific ICS definition but can be extended to include other compute and storage stacks. Both enterprises and service providers can build and deploy their ideal cloud platform using the ICS design, implementation, and operational best practices described in the Cisco VMDC 2.x documentation.
The ICS benefits include the following:
•Pre-validated physical units
•Simplified capacity planning
•Ease of new technology adoption
•Fault isolation
•Consistent build out and operation
•Flexible and efficient resource allocation
Multi-Tenant Support, Separation, and Security
Multi-tenancy refers to the virtualization of network, storage, and compute resources across the data center for each tenant. In VMDC 2.x, logical separation is used instead of requiring dedicated physical resources for each tenant. This separation is a critical attribute of any cloud deployment, as it differentiates cloud computing from co-location and dedicated infrastructure for each application.
Some of the virtualization technologies are Multi-VRF, multi-context Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) and Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Firewall Service Module (FWSM), and the Nexus 1000V. Table 2 presents the features and technologies that enable a layered security strategy in Cisco VMDC.
Differentiated Services
The Cisco VMDC architecture allows providers to build service level agreements (SLAs) that support their tenant or application requirements. Figure 1 is not meant to be a strict definition of resource allocation, but to demonstrate how differentiated service tiers could be built.
Figure 1 Example VMDC Service Tiers
VMDC extends service policies across the data center infrastructure allowing cloud administrators to create virtual data center addressing the specific business and application requirements of each tenant. Figure 2 is an example of two tenant virtual data centers and the possible combination of infrastructure services.
Figure 2 Example Virtual Data Center Service Policies
Service Orchestration Integration
The Cisco VMDC 2.x architecture includes an open management framework that enables provisioning of resources through service orchestration. A provider can deploy orchestration tools that provide a portal-based configuration model where a tenant can select from a defined number of service options.
Service orchestration offers a number of benefits:
•Significantly reduces the OpEx associated with administering and monitoring virtualized resources
•Decreasse provisioning time
•Provides an audit trail for fulfillment assurance and billing
•Connects and automates work flows when applicable to deliver a defined service
The service orchestrator used in the Cisco VMDC 2.x architecture is BMC Atrium Orchestrator. The overall components that enable orchestration in Cisco VMDC version 2.0 are listed in Table 3.
Cisco VMDC 2.1 uses the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution to provide a comprehensive set of capabilities for orchestrating and managing cloud environments. Table 4 describes the BMC components validated with the VMDC 2.1 architecture.
Workload Mobility and Disaster Recovery Capability
The VMDC architecture facilitates movement of workloads from ICS to ICS within a PoD, from ICS to ICS in different PoDs, and to an ICS in a different data center. VMware Site Recovery Manager provides disaster recovery by enabling movement of workloads from one data center site to another. On the storage side, different service tiers are provided disaster recovery and data protection with customized remote replication, such as recovery-point objective (RPO) or recovery-time objective (RTO).
Compact and Large PoD Details
VMDC 2.x provides two PoD design models: Compact and Large PoDs. Each model addresses different scale, growth, and cost points. The Compact PoD targets small to medium data centers and Large PoD targets data centers with higher scale requirements. In each of the designs, multiple ICSs scale the PoDs. The data center can scale to a larger number of tenants, applications, or workloads by adding PoDs.
Table 5 highlights differences between the PoD designs.
Components
Table 6 lists the components of the Cisco VDMC architecture.
Solution Validation
Testing Scope
Compact and Large PoD Scale
Further Reading
This document introduces the VMDC 2.02.x design. For the detailed design and implementation guides for this solution, please visit:
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 2.1 Design Guide
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 2.1 Implementation Guide
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 2.0, Large Pod Design Guide
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 2.0, Compact Pod Design Guide
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 2.0, Compact Pod Implementation Guide (Login Required)
Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center, Version 1.1
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/VMDC/1.1/vmdcDg11.html
About Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program
The CVD program consists of systems and solutions designed, tested, and documented to facilitate faster, more reliable, and more predictable customer deployments. For more information, visit www.cisco.com/go/designzone.
ALL DESIGNS, SPECIFICATIONS, STATEMENTS, INFORMATION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS (COLLECTIVELY, "DESIGNS") IN THIS MANUAL ARE PRESENTED "AS IS," WITH ALL FAULTS. CISCO AND ITS SUPPLIERS DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OR ARISING FROM A COURSE OF DEALING, USAGE, OR TRADE PRACTICE. IN NO EVENT SHALL CISCO OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS OR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO DATA ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE DESIGNS, EVEN IF CISCO OR ITS SUPPLIERS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
THE DESIGNS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. USERS ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR APPLICATION OF THE DESIGNS. THE DESIGNS DO NOT CONSTITUTE THE TECHNICAL OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OF CISCO, ITS SUPPLIERS OR PARTNERS. USERS SHOULD CONSULT THEIR OWN TECHNICAL ADVISORS BEFORE IMPLEMENTING THE DESIGNS. RESULTS MAY VARY DEPENDING ON FACTORS NOT TESTED BY CISCO.
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, Data ONTAP, FilerView, FlexClone, FlexShare, FlexVol, MultiStore, NearStore, NetApp Data Motion, RAID-DP, SANscreen, SnapDrive, SnapManager, SnapMirror, SnapRestore, Snapshot, SnapVault, vFiler, and WAFL are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
CCDE, CCENT, Cisco Eos, Cisco Lumin, Cisco Nexus, Cisco StadiumVision, Cisco TelePresence, Cisco WebEx, the Cisco logo, DCE, and Welcome to the Human Network are trademarks; Changing the Way We Work, Live, Play, and Learn and Cisco Store are service marks; and Access Registrar, Aironet, AsyncOS, Bringing the Meeting To You, Catalyst, CCDA, CCDP, CCIE, CCIP, CCNA, CCNP, CCSP, CCVP, Cisco, the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert logo, Cisco IOS, Cisco Press, Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems Capital, the Cisco Systems logo, Cisco Unity, Collaboration Without Limitation, EtherFast, EtherSwitch, Event Center, Fast Step, Follow Me Browsing, FormShare, GigaDrive, HomeLink, Internet Quotient, IOS, iPhone, iQuick Study, IronPort, the IronPort logo, LightStream, Linksys, MediaTone, MeetingPlace, MeetingPlace Chime Sound, MGX, Networkers, Networking Academy, Network Registrar, PCNow, PIX, PowerPanels, ProConnect, ScriptShare, SenderBase, SMARTnet, Spectrum Expert, StackWise, The Fastest Way to Increase Your Internet Quotient, TransPath, WebEx, and the WebEx logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries.
All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (0809R)
© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved