I recently wrote about deploying the Cisco n1000v switch in a vSphere 5.5 environment. That post covered the initial deployment and configuration tasks. This post picks up where I left off, and will go over how to add a secondary VSM to add redundancy to the n1000v deployment.
Deploying a secondary VSM is very similar to the deployment of the first one. Start by selecting ‘Deploy OVF Template’ in vCenter, then select the ‘ova’ file, using the same file as when deploying the primary:
The deployment wizard steps are identical those used when doing the first deployment, apart from a couple of steps. When prompted to set the ‘Deployment Configuration’, select ‘Nexus 1000V Secondary’ from the drop down list:
On the ‘Properties’ page, be sure to use the same VSM Domain ID that was used when deploying the first VSM:
On the last page, review the settings chosen, then click finish to deploy the secondary VSM appliance.
Verifying VSM HA Configuration
Once the secondary appliance has started, you can verify that the HA settings are as expected by running the ‘show redundancy status’ command on the switch:
You can see from the output that there is now a secondary VSM (sup-2) which is the HA standby VSM. If we power down the first VSM then log back into the switch using the same management IP, the connection will be to the secondary (sup-2):
Note that the state is now ‘Active with no standby’, due to the primary being unavailable.