Importing Existing External Connectivity Configuration

The following sections describe how to add a brownfield Cloud APIC site, which is already connected to an external device, to Nexus Dashboard and enable Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator to take over management of the existing external connectivity configuration in that site. In this case, the Infra tenant, external VRF, route leaking, and EPG contracts were all configured directly in the site's Cloud APIC and the Orchestrator is simply importing those configurations if you want to begin managing the site as part of your Multi-Site domain.

Adding an Existing Cloud Site in Nexus Dashboard

This section describes how to add your existing Cloud APIC site using the Nexus Dashboard GUI and then enable that site to be managed by Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to the Nexus Dashboard GUI
Step 2

Add a new site.

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Sites.

  2. In the top right of the main pane, select Actions > Add Site.

Step 3

Provide site information.

  1. For Site Type, select Cloud ACI.

  2. Provide the controller information.

    You need to provide the Host Name/IP Address, User Name, and Password. for the Cloud APIC.

  3. Click Add to finish adding the site.

    At this time, the sites will be available in the Nexus Dashboard, but you still need to enable them for Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator management as described in the following steps.

Managing the Site and Importing an Existing User Tenant

This section describes how to enable the site to be managed by Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator and import the existing cloud tenant.

Procedure

Step 1

From the Nexus Dashboard's Service Catalog, open the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator service.

You will be automatically logged in using the Nexus Dashboard user's credentials.
Step 2

In the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator GUI, manage the sites.

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Infrastructure > Sites.

  2. In the main pane, change the State from Unmanaged to Managed for each fabric that you want the NDO to manage.

Step 3

Import the existing cloud tenant.

  1. In the Sites page, click the actions (...) menu next to the site you enabled for management and select Import Tenants.

  2. In the Import Tenants dialog, select the tenant you want to import and click OK.

Step 4

Verify that the tenant's external connectivity infra configuration was imported successfully.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure > Infra Configuration page.

  2. Click Configure Infra.

  3. In the General Settings page, select the External Devices tab.

    Verify that the external device is present

  4. In the General Settings page, select the IPSec Tunnel Subnet Pools tab.

    Verify that the external connectivity subnet pool is present.

  5. In the left sidebar, select the site from which you imported the tenant.

    In the site's settings, select the External Connectivity tab and confirm that the external network is present.

Note 

Do not deploy infra configuration from Nexus Dashboard at this time and proceed to the next section to import the external VRF.

Importing External VRF and External EPG

This section describes how to import the existing external VRF.

Procedure

Step 1

Navigate to Application Management > Schemas page.

Step 2

Create a new schema and templates or select an existing schema where you will deploy the templates associated to the Infra tenant containing the external VRFs definition.

You can create a separate schema specifically for this use case, where you will define all templates associated to the Infra tenant and containing the external VRFs providing the connectivity to the external devices.

When creating the template:

  • You must use separate templates for different types of cloud sites (AWS or Azure), but the templates can be part of the same schema and you can associate the same template to multiple cloud sites of the same type. In other words, you can create a single template for all AWS sites and another template for all Azure sites.

  • You must choose the ACI Multi-Cloud template type.

  • You must map the template to the infra tenant or the VRFs cannot be used for external connectivity.

Step 3

Associate the template with the cloud site from which you will import existing configuration.
Step 4

In the main pane, click Import and select the cloud site.

Step 5

In the Import from <site> dialog, select the external VRF, the external EPG, and any contracts you want to import, and click Import.

Note 

At this point, the external VRF will be missing route leak configuration because the cloud VRF has not been imported into NDO yet, so do not deploy the template at this time and proceed to the next section to import the cloud VRF.

Importing Cloud VRF and Deploy Configuration

This section describes how to import the existing cloud VRF that contains your cloud workloads..

Procedure

Step 1

Navigate to Application Management > Schemas page.

Step 2

Create a new schema and templates or select an existing template where you will deploy the templates associated to the user tenant and cloud VRF.

Step 3

Associate the template with the cloud site from which you will import existing configuration.
Step 4

In the main pane, click Import and select the cloud site.

Step 5

In the Import from <site> dialog, select the cloud VRF and any EPGs associated with this cloud VRF, then click Import.

Note 

At this point, the cloud VRF will have route leak configuration but the external VRF still will not. So do not deploy the template at this time and proceed to the next step.

Step 6

Re-import the external VRF to pick up the route leak configurations.

After the user VRF has been imported with its route leak configuration, you can re-import the external VRF to pick up its route leak configuration as well. Simply repeat the procedure exactly as described in Importing External VRF and External EPG.

Step 7

Deploy both templates.

Once route leak configuration is properly imported for the external VRF and cloud VRF, deploy both templates.
Step 8

Deploy infra configuration.

  1. In the left navigation menu, select Infrastructure > Infra Configuration and click Configure Infra.

  2. In the top right of the main pane, choose Deploy.

    Since the external connectivity configuration already existed and you are simply managing it from the Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, the external devices have already been configured, so you need to only deploy the infra configuration.

  3. In the confirmation window, click Yes.

    The Deployment started, refer to left menu for individual site deployment status message will indicate that Infra configuration deployment began and you can verify each site's progress by the icon displayed next to the site's name in the left pane.