Migration from Nexus 7000 without VDC to VDC

Question

Hi all
I am working on a DataCenter architecture where we would like to implement Nexus 7000.
For the time being, there only one "context" but we may take the opportunity to implement VDC in a later future
I was not able to find a clear answer on the following :
  Can we add the VDC licence & configure a new VDC on a Nexus 7000 running without VDC ?
  I suppose this is possible. but does it need to have the whole configuration changed or adding a VDC can be done without any interruption on the current environnement ?
Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

Hello
To have VDC support on n7k you will require following license:
LAN_ADVANCED_SERVICES_PKG
To configure new vdc you need to run:
Nexus(config)# vdc
This will create new VDC which is separate from the current one. It shouldn't affect productional environment since separate processes started for new VDC.
Then you can allocate some interfaces to it and configure.
But you need to be careful to check whether you allocate unused interfaces and don't add resource excessive configuration.
Here is a very good explanation of what is VDC and how it works:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9402/ps9512/White_Paper_Tech_Overview_Virtual_Device_Contexts.html
And here is VDC config guide:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/sw/nx-os/virtual_device_context/configuration/guide/vdc_nx-os_cfg.html
HTH,
Alex