Q&A: Cisco Open NX-OS and Puppet
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The document provides Q&A regarding Cisco's Open NX-OS availability and functionalities on various Nexus switch series, detailing installation requirements and compatibility with tools like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible. It emphasizes that Open NX-OS is applicable across different architectures and includes information about configuration management, automation, and secure integration with existing tools. Future plans for expanding Open NX-OS compatibility and additional resources like lab guides are also mentioned.
Q&A: Cisco Open NX-OS and Puppet
- 1. Q&A © 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. Page 1 of 3 Accelerate Your IT Tasks with Open NX-OS December 10, 2015 Q. Is Open NX-OS available on the Cisco Nexus® 9000 and 3000 Series Switches? A. Yes, you can get these capabilities on the switches in each series. Some of these capabilities are available on the Cisco® Nexus 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series Switches. Check with your account manager on other capabilities. Q. How well do I need to understand Linux to be able to configure or complete new tasks? A. To install configuration management agents to automate on the Nexus switch, you will need to be able to use RPM or yum to install the agents.The process is documented in the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series programmability guide. Q. How does this differ from Cisco Data Center Networking Infrastructure and Cisco Prime™ products for management? A. Content management tools like Puppet are widely deployed in servers. Customers want to extend such capabilities to the network to unify processes and automation and to take full advantage of in-house expertise. Q. Is Open NX-OS useful only if we are using spine-leaf technology? A. No. NX-OS can be applied to whatever architecture you have. Q. Is the Puppet Agent included with Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switches, or does it need to be installed manually? A. You need purchase a license if you intend to use the Puppet Enterprise Agent and install it. Q. Does Puppet work with all Cisco products? A. It will over time, for Nexus products. Currently, it works with Nexus 9000 and 3000 Series Switches. Q. Does Puppet work with Chef? A. Cisco supports Chef, as well as Ansible.
- 2. © 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. Page 2 of 3 Q. Can Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0 manage the Puppet Agent or does it require a separate Puppet master server? A. It is recommended to use a Puppet Enterprise master to obtain reporting and orchestration abilities. Q. Can I install Quagga and use it to program routes in hardware? A. Yes. Q. Is Cisco Open NX-OS open-sourced? Is there a public repository? A. Open NX-OS ships as part of Cisco Nexus platforms. Q. What about secure integration with existing tools? A. Open NX-OS allows you to install apps natively in the root or in a secure guest shell. Q. Can I install Open NX-OS on other vendor switches like Quanta or Accton? A. Cisco Open NX-OS works on Cisco Nexus platforms. Q. Are lab guides available? A. Check the Open NX-OS community site at https://opennxos.cisco.com/ for updates. Q. How do rollbacks work with yml files? A. Specify a yml file you would like to execute as a parameter to the Ansible playbook on your Ansible server. It will apply the configuration as defined in that file to the infrastructure. Q. What are the differences between Ansible and Cisco Prime Infrastructure netconfig jobs? A. They use different tools and different approaches. Ansible is available through the Ansible Nexus plugin as part of the Ansible 2.0 release. Q. Will configuration management for a virtual SAN, zoning, and other functions be available on the Cisco MDS family of storage products? A. Check with your account manager for more information. Q. Aren’t these changes adding too much risk and complexity in coding? A. GUIs can utilize NX-API REST. Any user can build any tool on top of it, and customize it to meet their needs. It is one of the advantages in exposing this API.
- 3. © 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. Page 3 of 3 Q. Will Open NX-OS be available on any other Cisco OS platforms? A. There are plans to include Open NX-OS on Cisco Nexus 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series Switches in future releases. Open NX-OS works on some Cisco IOS®-XE and IOS-XR Software products but it is based on a different code base. Q. Is there a significant difference between the virtual Nexus 9000 and the one within the Virtual Internet Routing Lab (VIRL)? A. The v9k is not supported in VIRL. Most of these capabilities are not available in that version yet. The v9K represents our Open NX-OS software image. We will integrate VIRL support in calendar year 2016. Q. I don't understand the auto configuration. Each switch has a unique management address and I have different VLANs at each location. Am I prompted for the unique data? How do I handle changing variables at each location? A. Specify the management IP address of the switch and include it in the REST API. Call in the URL. Each switch is unique.