Cisco Virtual Network Management Center (VNMC) provides centralized multidevice and policy management for Cisco network virtual services. 

When combined with the Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch, ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall, or the Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), it enables:

• CloudStack integration through XML APIs
• Support for ASA 1000v edge firewalls to enable:
  • Adding and configuring edge firewalls
  • Creating and applying edge security profiles that contain access control list (ACL) policy sets (ingress and egress), connection timeout, Network Address Translation (NAT) policy sets, TCP intercept, VPN interface policy sets, and more
  • Site-to-site IPsec VPNs

Currently the 1000v series and the VSG are supported on VMWare hypervisors. 
This would be the deployment model with CloudStack:

Use Cases / Flow

1. Cloud operator adds VNMC as a network element using admin API addCiscoVnmcController, specifying username and password
2. Cloud operator creates isolated guest network offering with source nat using ASA1000v as the service provider for firewall, source nat, port forwarding. CloudStack system vm is used for DHCP, userdata and metadata, password server
3. Cloud operator creates VPC network offering with source nat using ASA1000v as the service provider for firewall, source nat, port forwarding, ACL and routing. CloudStack system vm is used for DHCP, userdata and metadata, password server.
4. Network offerings as above, but using VXLAN as the isolation technology
5. Network offerings as above, with LB added, and using Cloudstack System VM as LB provider
6. Network offerings as above, with LB added, and using Netscaler VPX as LB provider

VNMC interaction

The VNMC controller is a VMWare appliance that presents an XML API to control the Cisco virtual appliance porfolio.
The GUI is a Flash-based web application that utilizes the XML API to interact with the controller. By enabling the flash debugger (see http://s.apache.org/v5) we can capture the precise XML commands required by CloudStack.

Design details

CiscoVnmcResource

The resource translates abstract network configuration commands such as SetStaticNatRule into concrete XML api calls to the VNMC controller

CiscoVnmcElementService

The service is a pluggable service that allows the cloud operator to provision the VNMC controller URL and credentials into CloudStack

CiscoVnmcManager

The manager implements the CiscoVnmcElementService. It also pre-creates and manages a pool of ASA1000v appliances. The pool is created with an initial capacity and is expanded as demand grows. As networks are de-provisioned, the appliances are returned to the pool.

CiscoVnmcElement

The network element participates in L2 orchestration by extending NetworkElement. When a network is created, the element needs to

• create a tenant and tenant vdc in VNMC if not already created
• create the following policies / objects if not already created inside the tenant VDC
  • Edge Static route policy
  • Edge static route
  • Source NAT pool
  • Edge security profile to deny all incoming traffic
  • Create an edge firewall
  • Associate an unused ASA1000v to the firewall

The Cisco ASA1000v can function as a DHCP server, however it cannot guarantee a specific ip<->mac address mapping. Therefore the CloudStack systemvm will be used for this purpose.

The CiscoVnmcElement also implement the IpDeployer and various service provider interfaces to satisfy the requirements of the network offering.

VXLAN isolation

VXLAN isolation needs to be added as an isolation method, with a specific Guru managing allocation of the VXLAN network identifier (VNI)

h7. VSG interaction
The VSG can be used to provide security group isolation.