Big Switch – Cloud Fabric integration with VMWare vSphere – Part 2

This post is a followup to the part 1 of BCF/vSPhere integration.

Let us have a quick look at the per step/per tier automation this integration enables, starting from the End points..

• BCF Controller interconnection with vCenter: 
  • Configuring vCenter in BCF is straight forward, requiring the nomination of the tenant, ip address and authentication parameters.
  • The controller acts a single point of integration with vCenter through a vCenter extension developed using vCenter APIs.
  • Deploying the BCF plugin within vCenter is equally straight forward, requiring a simple CLI command on the BCF Controller CLI: deploy vsphere gui-plugin vcenter-name vcenter-user
  • After the two are connected, the controller downloads the vCenter inventory information and automatically provisions each switch in BCF to support the existing inventory.
  • Once the baseline vCenter configuration is established, the controller is automatically updated by inventory updates from vCenter, which the controller takes as input to auto configure/update the fabric switches.

• Compute/Server to ToR Leaf Switch Pair:
  • Building LAG groups & discovering endpointsOnce LLDP/CDP is configured in vCenter, BCF automatically discovers ESXi hosts connected to leaf switches.
    • BCF listens for LLDP advertisements to learn the physical leaf switch attachment points of a vSphere Port Group
    • The controller automatically constructs LAGs in the physical switch fabric through LLDP/CDP from virtual switches in ESXi hosts.
    • ESXi Servers connect to ToR switches via LAGs. To utilize Load balancing & failover, use vCenter NIC teaming.
  • VLAN/L2 Segment creation & VM Provision
    • When vCenter creates, modifies or deletes virtual switch port-groups, BCF Controller gets updated and performs corresponding operation to facilitate L2 VLANs/Segments.
  • vMotion/VM Relocation
    • When a VM is moved as part of vMotion, BCF controller is updated with the new location – and consequently migrates the network policies dynamically and updates the forwarding tables

• ToR Leaf Switch Pair to Spine Switches: 
  • BCF demands a topology lockin – Leaf & Spine. The Clos fabric has the following characteristics: Efficient horizontal scaling
  • • Path resilience
    • Deterministic traffic flows
    • Predictable latency and jitter.
    • Greatly shrunken Failure Domain vs. 2 unit Fat-Tree/Multi-tier Core
  • The Spine/Leaf fabric Formation is Automated. During the initial Config, BCF Controller has to be advised of the following, after which the Clos fabric is activated.
    • Switch names
    • Switch MAC
    • Switch Role
    • If the role is that of a Leaf switch, assign it to the ToR pair/group it belongs to.
    • Define LAG groups, with respective members.
  • Complete the respective Tenant & Service Chaining Configuration, as needed.

Within the BCG Gui, the Controller view of the vCenter integration looks like the following:

and the following captures the BCF plugin within vCenter: