Healthcare
Data Center

DCNM to NDFC Migration for a Major U.S. Health Insurance Company

Case Study Glance Shape

At a glance

The client wanted to migrate Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) to Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) for their production environment, as well as guidance for some of their other fabrics. The client’s primary data center had 170+ Nexus switches, 6 separate managed fabrics, and an additional 12 switch fabrics needed for monitoring only. Converting their production fabric and documenting the process was critical to assist their other environments.

About the client

The client is one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., with over 15 million customers. The company has been on the Fortune 500 list for over 25 years. 

Challenges

The client’s daily operations through DCNM were becoming cumbersome, with new VLAN deployments taking hours to complete with their large networks. Additionally, it was becoming difficult to manage multiple fabrics, and Arista CVP was brought in to configure the management network. Because of this, personnel resources were spent mostly on operations, limiting resources for upcoming and future projects and negatively affecting business objectives. 

Solutions

  • Gather requirements and design decisions on how best to migrate from DCNM to NDFC.
  • Validate and verify switch versions are at proper levels for NDFC.
  • Test and validate export/import of DCNM configurations to NDFC.
  • Deploy best practice configurations for operational simplicity and monitoring of the NDFC fabric(s).
  • Build standard processes for troubleshooting and configuration changes for NDFC, including automation.

Results and benefits

Gruve successfully prepared the customer’s NX-OS fabric to migrate from DCNM to NDFC. The project showcased how NDFC is able to deploy day-to-day operations with ease, and it helped provide a path for the customer to no longer need Arista CVP. Gruve also showed processes and MOP (Method of Procedure) to the customer on how to repeat this process for a successful migration for other fabrics.