We're going to learn about the networking virtualization features supported by the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) for communicating between virtual machines (VMs).
On the server side, as you may know, solutions like VMware virtualize hardware resources such as a server's CPU, memory, disk, and network interface card (NIC) to provide an environment where multiple VMs (each running an independent OS and applications) can run simultaneously on a single server without interfering with each other.
Cisco UCS is another solution that provides "Virtualization-Aware Networking" (networking for virtualized server environments) rather than "Virtualization Networking".
UCS architecture
A solution that uses the UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC), which hardwareizes the Virtual Ethernet (vEth) interface functionality of the Nexus 1000V, is the Network Adapter Card that is installed in each Blade Server. In this case, the Nexus 1000V is not required.
VIC(Virtual Interface Card)
The VIC can provide up to 128 vEth interfaces to connect 1:1 with vNICs, which in turn can connect 1:1 with Virtual Interfaces (VIFs) on the UCS Fabric Interconnect. In this case, the UCS Fabric Interconnect performs L2 switching based on VIFs as well as L2 switching based on physical ports/VLANs, and you can define a network policy for each VM on the VIF.
Ultimately, the solution is to create a virtual port (VIC in Fabric Interconnect) for each vNIC assigned to each VM and perform L2 switching based on the virtual port.
VNTag
Since there will be multiple VM packets passing through the physical ports between the Blade Chassis and the UCS Fabric Interconnect, we define a VNTagged Packet (VN; Virtual Network) to ensure a 1:1 mapping of vNICs/vEths to VICs, so that the UCS Fabric Interconnect can identify the VM and the vNICs belonging to the VM through the VIF_ID in the VNTag. The link over which the VNTagged Packet passes is called a VN-Link.
By using hardware based VICs, communication between VMs on the same server always goes through the UCS Fabric Interconnect
- Performance improvements over software-based switches within the hypervisor (38% performance improvement over hypervisor vSwitch according to Cisco)
- UCS Fabric Interconnect provides network management simplicity by unifying the access switches responsible for communicating between VMs/servers
'Cisco UCS' 카테고리의 다른 글
| [UCS] vmnic received packets dropped (0) | 2024.03.01 |
|---|---|
| [UCSM] FI6454, IOM2408 thermal problem, fan equipment inoperable (0) | 2024.02.29 |
| [UCS B200M5] POWER_SYS_FLT:Sensor Failure (0) | 2024.02.28 |
| [UCSM] error accessing shared-storage (0) | 2024.02.27 |
