Deploy Interface Group with NDFC

Welcome. In this video, you will learn how to deploy interface groups with NexSys Dashboard Fabric Controller. You will begin with create an interface group, then add an interface and attach networks to the interface group, and finally, deploy configuration to the switches. So let's get started. Your company has deployed a data center using Nexus nine k switches. Nexus dashboard fabric controller is being used to provision the network infrastructure. It's expected that the network will scale in the future, which creates an administration headache on configuring the downlinks. To match the scalability needs, you are looking for a feature to simplify the deployment of networks to reduce administrative tasks, mitigate human errors and save time. You as a network administrator has been tasked to use interface groups to provision the network. You will review the existing fabric deployment, then create an interface group, followed by adding interfaces to the interface group, attach networks, and finally recalculate preview and deploy configuration. You are now on the NexSys dashboard fabric controller user interface. In this scenario, a fabric has already been discovered and provisioned by the NexSys dashboard fabric controller. To explore it, navigate to Topology, choose the existing fabric and notice you have two leafs and two spines interconnected. You can scale your design by adding more leafs if needed. However, more leafs means more interfaces and each interface require its own configuration. To make your provisioning easier, you can create an interface group which allows group of host facing interfaces at a fabric level. Then you can attach multiple overlay networks to the interface group. To create an interface group while you are under the Topology page, click on Actions, then from the dropdown menu, select Detailed View to open the fabric settings. Navigate to the Interface Groups tab and from the Actions drop down menu, select Create new interface group. Provide a descriptive name for your group. Let's call it WEP endpoints since we will add interfaces that are connected to the WEP endpoints. You can limit which interface types can belong to the interface group. You can create an interface group for physical Ethernet interfaces, layer two port channels, and VPCs. We will leave that to the default, which is Any. Then click on Save. Next, you will add interfaces to the Interface group. To do that, navigate to the Interfaces tab and use the filter to search for the interfaces of interest. In our case, we want to add interface Ethernet thirteen on leaf one. Select the interfaces as per your needs. Pay attention that the interface groups are limited to switches with the leaf RAW. After selecting the interfaces from the Actions drop down menu, select Add to Interface Group. A new window appears where you can select an existing interface group or you can use a quick link to create a new interface group. From the Interface Group drop down list, select the previously created one called Web Endpoints. Then click on Save. Repeat the same process to assign the rest of the interfaces to the interface group. In our case, we also want to assign Ethernet one point four on leaf two to the Web Endpoint interface group. Select the interface, then from the actions, click on Add to interface group. Select the endpoints, then click on save. Next, you can start using the interface group. For example, you can enable networks on the interface groups. This is where you allow VLANs on all the interfaces within the group instead of configuring each interface on its own. To do that, navigate to the networks tab. We already have a network named WebTenant1 pre created. Select the network you want to enable on the interface group. Then from the actions drop down menu, choose Add to Interface Group. A new dialog appears where you can choose the interface group created in the previous step. After selecting it, click on save. Notice the network status is pending, which means there is a pending configuration for this network to be provisioned. You need to recalculate the new config that will be pushed down to the switches. To do that, click the fabric actions and then select Recalculate Config. In the deploy configuration window, you can click the link in the pending config column to preview the configuration. Notice the web network, which has a VLAN ID one hundred, will be enabled on the interfaces that belong to the interface group. Once you are done with reviewing the config, click on Close, then click Deploy to start the provisioning process. When the deployment completes, make sure the status is success and then click on Close. Finally, you can verify that the config is successfully pushed to the devices. Using a terminal of your choice, log into the switches where you made your changes. You can check whether the network is enabled under the interfaces. As you can see, VLAN one hundred is successfully provisioned. This concludes our Cisco technical education video on deploying face Group with NDFC. Thank you for watching.