NEXUS Dashboard, NEXUS Insights and AppDynamics Lab

Previously, NAE, NIR and NIA ran separately on computing as a .ova in vSphere or on the APIC as an application. The architecture never allowed for sharing data between the apps or correlations with errors and telemetry views of packet loss. With the roadmap moving, we had applications and a shared data lake for all applications to draw from and correlate between application errors, changes to the policy and deep flow telemetry, all visual as an epoch. The NEXUS Dashboard (ND) platform allows all the Cisco day 2 apps and third-party applications for these needs. Secondly, the ND has to be an expandable CPU and storage-intensive platform; today, the platform can scale with 3 master nodes and 4 worker nodes with the apps and their data residing on the ND cluster. As ND matures, more ND servers can join the cluster, and they can be separated regionally if within TTL requirements to distribute applications and provide DR strategies.

The goal of the lab is twofold. The first is to introduce the NEXUS Dashboard platform to the student. We then perform a deep dive on NEXUS Dashboard installation scenarios and an overview of how to do a NEXUS Dashboard (ND) install from scratch. The ND install is not part of the lab, but screenshots are included that explain how to perform the installation. We then explore the ND, add a site to ND and create a user for RBAC use.

Secondly, we show how the NEXUS Insights application is used on the ND platform to ingest data from switches and other applications to provide correlated data. We do a deep dive into using NEXUS Insights to maintain and troubleshoot your ACI or DCNM environment. We also show how third-party applications like AppDynamics can be ingested by NEXUS Insights and provide correlated business analytics with ACI or DCNM traffic flow and issues. This integration allows us to fix network issues with a much faster MTTR and see these business issues in real-time.

The lab is created by utilizing components in the Cisco ACI product portfolio. The components used include:

• NEXUS Dashboard Simulator running 2.0.1b code release
• Network Insights running 5.1 code release