Site icon

Cisco MultiSite Orchestrator on Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Soumitra Mukherji

Changes:

11/30/2021 with updated information on Ansible and Terraform

In a previous article,  I had introduced and guided on how to install Cisco Nexus Dashboard.  In this post I will discuss and do a short guidance on installing Cisco MSO on Cisco ND.

Installation is really simple as you will see in a bit.  It’s really not much more involved than going to ND Service Catalog / APP Store and then download and install the MSO Application.   Before we go there let’s quickly discuss some of the main items that you should know about MSO on ND.

Items you should know about MSO on ND:

Short guidance on installing Cisco MSO on Cisco ND.

As discussed earlier,  installing any app on ND is really simple.  If you wanted to download the MSO software on a http server or locally, and then install from there you can Click on Service Catalog and click on Install Apps

Figure 1

At that point, you can choose Remote or Local and install the App from there as shown below

Figure 2

Alternatively ( the preferred method), is to click on the APP Store tab and choose the MSO App from there and install it from there as shown below

Figure 3

Click on Agree and Download

Figure 4

You will see the state change from Uploading to Installing to Installed. 

Figure 5

At this point, click on Enable.

Figure 6

Next, you are going to be presented with a “Deployment Profile”.   The Deployment Profile is nothing but a K8s CRD (Custom Resource Definition).  At this point there are 2 different CRDs that are defined and you can use any of those.  In the future you will be able to define your own CRDs depending on the App and your needs.  

Figure 7

It will take a little bit of time for the app to deploy and get ready for use.   When it’s ready, you can open up the MSO app by clicking on the “Open” button.

Figure 8

Once you open it, you will be greeted with the familiar Welcome Banner

Figure 9

From here, you can either configure it as a new MSO,  by changing the Sites to Managed (remember the Sites came directly from ND). and then configure the Infra.

Figure 10
Figure 11

Or, if you are upgrading from an older MSO to this release,  restore the backup from the older MSO to this MSO.

Figure 12
Figure 13

As discussed earlier,  please notice that from 3.2 MSO does not have “Add Site” option and there is no “Add User” Option.

Figure 14

Example Bash Script to send Json encapsulated API calls to MSO

As discussed above API calls to MSO/ND work just like they used to in previous release of MSO.   Below is a sample bash script that you can use to send json encapsulated API calls to MSO

#!/bin/sh
# Make sure to have jq installed. ubuntu: "sudo apt update && sudo apt install jq -y "
# MSO 3.1.1g / SE
# USER=someUser          # only needed for Option 1
# Password=somePassword  # only needed for Option 1
# HOST=10.0.0.3

# MSO 3.2.1f / ND
# USER=someUser          # only needed for Option 1
# Password=somePassword  # only needed for Option 1
HOST=10.0.0.5

# POST
CURL_OPTS_POST='-v -k -X POST'

# GET
CURL_OPTS_GET='-s -k -X GET'


### Option 1. Login & Get Token, credentials come from variables
#AUTHPAYLOAD={\"username\":\"$USER\",\"password\":\"$PASS\"}
#TOKEN=$(curl $CURL_OPTS_POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://$HOST/api/v1/auth/login -d $AUTHPAYLOAD | jq -r .token)
#echo $TOKEN

### Option 2. Login & Get Token, credentials come from file like example creds.json
## make a creds.json file like so: {"username" : "someUser" , "password": "somePassword"}
TOKEN=$(curl $CURL_OPTS_POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://$HOST/api/v1/auth/login -d "@creds.json" | jq -r .token)
#echo $TOKEN


# Get Tenants
echo "Tenant Info"
echo "----------"
curl $CURL_OPTS_GET -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://$HOST/api/v1/tenants -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" | jq

# Get Schemas and extract Contract Relationships
echo " Contract Relationship"
echo "----------------------"
curl $CURL_OPTS_GET -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://$HOST/api/v1/schemas -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" | jq '.schemas[].templates[].anps[].epgs[] | {name, contractRelationships}'

The Output gives me the Contract Relationships as you can see below:

Figure 15

References:

Cisco Multi-Site Configuration Guide for ACI Fabrics, Release 3.2(x)

Exit mobile version