Deploying VXLAN EVPN Fabric with NDFC

Hello, and welcome to VXLAN EVPN Fabric video. In this video, you will learn how to deploy VXLAN EVPN Fabric using Nexa's dashboard fabric controller. You will begin with create a VXLAN fabric, then discover and add switches to the fabric, and finally, you will set the switch roles and deploy config. So let's get started. Your company is deploying a new data center using Nexus nine k switches. Your team is looking for a tool to effectively provision and monitor the VXLAN EVPN fabric in the data center infrastructure. You as a network administrator has been tasked to use the Nexus dashboard fabric controller to provision the fabric. You will enable the feature set on the NexSys dashboard, then you will create the fabric using the easy fabric template where you need to enter the fabric settings, followed by adding switches to the fabric. Then you will set the switch roles to define leafs and spines, and finally, you will recalculate the new configuration for each switch, preview the config, and deploy it. You are now on the Nexus dashboard fabric controller user interface. When you launch the fabric controller for the first time, none of the feature sets is enabled. To start building the fabric, you need to enable the Fabric Controller feature set. To do that, select the Fabric Controller feature set and make sure the Fabric Builder Service is selected. Then click on Apply. As a result, the feature set will be deployed and the selected applications will be enabled. In a few moments, make sure the Fabric Builder status is started. A message appears that the services are restarting. In a few moments, refresh the page and you will regain access to the user interface. Once you log in back, a warning message is displayed to inform you that you need to set the default device credentials. LAN credentials are required by the fabric controller to perform any change to the device configuration. To configure it, click on set credentials. At the top of the screen, click on set to configure the default credentials. Write down the credentials and then click on Save. A message appears to inform you that the operation is successful. Click Okay. Next, you will create the fabric. The NexSys dashboard fabric controller use the fabric workflow to unify underlay and overlay provisioning of VXLAN BGP EVPN configuration. To create the fabric, expand the lane and select Fabrics. Then from the Actions dropdown list, select Create Fabric. Enter the fabric name. Let's call it SiteOne. Then click on Choose a Fabric, and from the dropdown list, select Data Center VXLAN EVPN Fabric. Click on Select. The fabric settings for creating a standalone fabric will appear. Most of the network parameters are provisioned by default. The only value you must manually enter is the autonomous system number. Under General parameters, in the PGP ASN field, enter the PGP autonomous system number the fabric is associated with. You can keep the rest of the parameters to their default values or customize them as per your needs. For example, under Resources, you can adjust the subnet ranges for the underlay configuration. Once you're done, click on Save. Next, you will need to discover the switches and add them to the fabric. Double click the fabric name you created to display the fabric details. In the Fabric Overview page, click on the Actions and then from the drop down list, select Add Switches. The Add Switch dialog will appear where you will need to enter the IP address of the seed switch to discover the fabric. Go ahead and enter the seed IP address as per your design. Provide the credentials that will be used to authenticate with the seed switch. You can also specify the maximum number of hops between the seed and the near switches that will be discovered. You also need to uncheck the Preserve configuration option. Since this is a new deployment, the fabric controller will erase the configuration on the switches after adding them to the fabric to make them ready for the VXLAN EVPN provisioning. Once done, click on Discover switches. You get a warning dialog to inform you that the current switch configuration will be removed. Click Confirm. After a few seconds, you get a list of the discovered switches using the provided parameters. Select the switches to be added to the fabric, then click on Add switches. Wait a few moments till the status becomes Switch added, then click on Close. To verify the added switches, navigate to the Switches tab. The switches will need to reboot for the configuration to be erased. Wait for the switches to come back first before moving to the next task. Next, you need to assign the switch roles. The fabric controller needs to know which switches are supposed to be leafs, spines, border gateways, and so on. This will help the fabric controller to identify the generated configuration for each switch. To assign the switch roles, while you are under the Switches tab, select the switches that you want to configure. Then from the Actions drop down menu, select Set role. Choose the switch role as per your needs, then click on Select. You will receive a warning message about performing a recalculate for the configuration. Click on Okay. Repeat the same process for the rest of the switches till every switch has the correct roll. To verify the current roll for each switch, you can take a look at the roll column. After selecting the switch rolls, you need to recalculate the new configuration that will be pushed down to the switches. To do that, click on actions and from the drop down menu, select recalculate config. In a few moments, the deploy configuration window will appear. You can see the switches are out of sync, which means there is a pending configuration to be provisioned. Click the link in the pending config to preview the configuration. In the pending config tab, you can preview the configuration that will be pushed down to the switch. In the side by side comparison, you can compare the running configuration with the expected config in green that will be provisioned. Once you're done, click on Close and then click on deploy. At that point, the NDFC will start the provisioning process. This will take a few moments. Once the deployment is completed, make sure the status is success and then click on Close. Finally, to verify the config is successfully pushed to the devices, you can log in to one of the switches added to the fabric using a terminal of your choice. You can issue the command show run section BGP to verify the BGP configuration that was provisioned by the fabric controller. You can also issue the command show run section in VE to verify the VXLAN VTEP interfaces created on the switch. This concludes our Cisco technical education video on deploying VXLAN fabric with NDFC. Thank you for watching.