The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker is a simple, scalable, and cost-effective solution for data center, enterprise, and service provider customers who need to monitor high-volume and business-critical traffic. It replaces traditional purpose-built matrix switches with one or more Cisco Nexus 3000, 9300 or 9500 series switches that you can interconnect to build a highly scalable TAP-Aggregation network that can help copy or mirror the production traffic using Optical TAPs (test access points) and Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN).
Figure 7-11 shows the two key parts that form the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker solution. The first of these is the Cisco Nexus switches that provide aggregation, filtering, replication, and redirection capabilities. The second is the controller, which pushes the configuration to the switches to perform these functionalities.
Figure 7-11 Cisco Nexus Dashboard Data Broker Solution
The Cisco Nexus switches form the Nexus Dashboard Data Broker (NDDB) switches, which connect to the production network to aggregate the copy traffic using TAP and SPAN methods. The aggregated traffic is filtered and redirected to tools as configured by the customer as shown in Figure 7-12.
Figure 7-12 Nexus Dashboard Data Broker deployment model
The data broker controller can be deployed in the following modes:
Centralized: The controller is deployed on a VM/server/bare metal outside the TAP aggregation switches. In this mode, the controller can support a multi-switch TAP aggregation topology as shown in Figure 7-12.
Embedded: The controller is deployed on the TAP aggregation switch using guest shell. In this mode, the controller can only be used as a single switch deployment.
Nexus Dashboard: The controller will be supported as an application on Cisco Nexus Dashboard.
Cisco ACI: The controller will be supported as an application on Cisco ACI APICs.