Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller Lab

During this lab, we will demonstrate how Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller can easily set up multi-site fabric with a simple point-and-click GUI to build an EVPN/VXLAN switch fabric. It will let you do this with ease — no need to know the protocols or best practices. The controller will do the work for you. 

Note: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) is the next generation released version of Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM.)

This lab will enable a student to build a basic multi-site fabric using Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) for complete end-to-end connectivity.

This lab has the following sections.

Lab synopsis

• List of Prerequisites
• Introductions

Getting started with NDFC

• How to lunch the lab

Creation of the first fabric

• A guided tour of the creation of the EAST fabric
• Discovery of switches
• Simple changes to VPC interfaces

Creation of the second fabric

• A guided tourer to the creation of the WEST fabric
• Discovery of switches
• Simple changes to VPC interfaces

Building the external fabric

• Building a fabric that will act as virtual glue to tie EAST and WEST together.
• Discovery of the switch that will serve as the Core router

Building the MSD fabric

• Building a fabric of fabrics that will allow for the creation of global VRFs and Networks
• Moving all individual fabrics into the MSD fabric
• Creating a VRF

Configuring VPCs connections for servers

• Connection servers to VPC connections

Configuring networks

• Create MSD VLANs
• Add interface to the MSD VLANs

Verification of the lab

• ICMP tests end-to-end communication both from a layer 2 and layer 3 perspective

9x Cisco Nexus 9000v version 9.3(5)

4x Ubuntu Servers 20.04 LTS

1x Cisco NDFC 2.2(1h)