Introduction

The Nexus operating system (NX-OS) contains a modular software architecture that primarily targets high-speed/high-density network environments like data centers. NX-OS provides virtualization, high availability, scalability, and upgradeability features for Nexus switches.

In particular, the NX-OS is expected to have a measure of resilience during software upgrades or hardware upgrades (failover, OIR), with both sets of operations not affecting nonstop forwarding. NX-OS is required to scale to very large multichassis systems and still operate with the same expectations of resilience in the face of outages of various kinds. The NX-OS feature set includes a variety of features and protocols that have revolutionized data center designs with virtual port channels (vPC), Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), and now virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN).

The Nexus 7000 switch debuted in 2008, providing more than 512 10 Gbps ports. Over the years, Cisco has released other Nexus switch families that include the Nexus 5000, Nexus 2000, Nexus 9000, and virtual Nexus 1000. NX-OS has grown in features, allowing Nexus switch deployments in enterprise routing and switching roles.

This book is the single source for mastering techniques to troubleshoot various features and issues running on Nexus platforms with NX-OS operating system. Bringing together content previously spread across multiple sources and Cisco Press titles, it covers updated various features and architecture-level information on how various features function on Nexus platforms and how one can leverage the capabilities of NX-OS to troubleshoot them.

Who Should Read This Book?

Network engineers, architects, or consultants who want to learn more about the underlying Nexus platform and NX-OS operating system so that they can know how to troubleshoot complex network issues with NX-OS. This book also provides a great reference for those studying for their CCIE Data Center Certification.

How This Book Is Organized

Although this book could be read cover to cover, it is designed to be flexible and allow you to easily move between chapters and sections of chapters to cover just the material that you need more work with.

Part I of the book, “Introduction to Troubleshooting Nexus Switches” provides an overview on the Nexus platform and the components of NX-OS used for troubleshooting network events.

  • Chapter 1, “Introduction to the Nexus Operating System (NX-OS)”: This chapter introduces the Nexus platform and the major functional components of the Nexus operating system (NX-OS). The chapter discusses the four fundamental pillars of NX-OS: resiliency, virtualization, efficiency, and extensibility.

  • Chapter 2, “NX-OS Troubleshooting Tools”: This chapter explains the history of packet capture, NetFlow, EEM, logging, and event history.

  • Chapter 3, “Troubleshooting Nexus Platform Issues”: This chapter examines various Nexus platform components and commands to troubleshoot issues with the supervisor cards and line cards, hardware drops, and fabric issues. This chapter also examines how to troubleshoot interface and PLIM-level issues on the line card. This chapter also covers issues related to CoPP policies and how to troubleshoot CoPP-related issues.

Part II of the book, “Troubleshooting Layer 2 Forwarding,” explains the specific components for troubleshooting Nexus switches during the switching of network packets.

  • Chapter 4, “Nexus Switching”: This chapter explains how Nexus switches forward packets and explains switch port types, private VLANs, and Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP).

  • Chapter 5, “Port Channels, Virtual Port-Channels, and FabricPath”: This chapter covers in great detail how vPC, Fabric Path, and vPC+ works and how they add value to the next generation DC design. This chapter focuses on designing, implementing, and troubleshooting issues related to vPC and vPC+.

Part III of the book, “Troubleshooting Layer 3 Routing,” explains the underlying IP components of NX-OS. This includes the routing protocols EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, and the selection of routes for filtering or path manipulation.

Part IV of the book, “Troubleshooting High Availability,” discusses and explains the high availability components of NX-OS.

  • Chapter 12, “High Availability”: This chapter explains how to troubleshoot high availability components such as bidirectional forward detection (BFD), Stateful Switchover (SSO), In-service software upgrade (ISSU) and Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR).

Part V of the book, “Multicast Network Traffic,” explains the operational components of multicast network traffic on Nexus switches.

Part VI of the book, “Troubleshooting Nexus Tunneling,” discusses the various tunneling techniques that NX-OS provides.

Part VII of the book, “Network Programmability,” provides details on the methods that NX-OS can be configured with APIs and automation.

  • Chapter 15, “Programability and Automation”: This chapter examines various application programming interfaces (APIs) that are available with NX-OS and how they enable network operations to automate their network.

On the product web page you also will find a bonus chapter, “Troubleshooting VxLAN and VxLAN BGP EVPN.”

Additional Reading

The authors tried to keep the size of the book manageable while providing only necessary information for the topics involved.

Some readers may require additional reference material and may find the following books a great supplementary resource for the topics in this book.

  • Fuller, Ron, David Jansen, and Matthew McPherson. NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, 2013.

  • Edgeworth, Brad, Aaron Foss, and Ramiro Garza Rios. IP Routing on Cisco IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, 2014.

  • Krattiger, Lukas, Shyam Kapadia, and David Jansen. Building Data Centers with VXLAN BGP EVPN. Indianapolis: Cisco Press, 2017.

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