SDN Cisco DCNM + iTRACS

• The data center fabric is the quietest and most devastating point of failure.​ When a core Nexus switch or an MDS Fibre Channel switch goes down, you don’t lose a single network link. You lose connectivity for dozens or hundreds of servers to the network, to storage, or to both. Yet the physical infrastructure team needs to know which rack, which unit and which cabling that switch is on in order to act. Without integration, translating a “DCNM alarm” into a “physical intervention in the data hall” relies on manual documentation that is rarely up to date when a crisis hits.

• SAN (Fibre Channel) visibility missing from the physical inventory. MDS switches manage the storage network: the connection between servers and disk arrays. They live in the data center, but usually only the storage team knows and manages them. The DCIM records servers and storage, but the fabric that connects them (the MDS switches, their ports, their capacity, their status) is a blind spot. Integrating DCNM closes that gap. Every Fibre Channel switch appears in the DCIM with its location, operational status, port capacity and alarms, giving full visibility into a layer that is currently invisible to infrastructure management.

• Fabric port capacity without physical growth context. DCNM knows how many ports on each Nexus and MDS switch are in use and how many are available. But it doesn’t know whether there is room in that rack for another switch, whether the PDU can take more load, or whether the patch panel has free ports. The decision on “where to put the new switch” is made without real physical data. The integration makes it possible to plan fabric growth by combining logical capacity data (DCNM) with physical capacity data (DCIM).

• Two management worlds that don’t talk to each other: data network and storage network in silos. In a data center, the network team manages the Nexus switches in DCNM, the storage team manages the MDS switches (sometimes in a separate DCNM instance or in SAN tools), and the infrastructure team manages physical location in the DCIM. Three teams, three tools, three partial views of the same data center. Integrating DCNM with the DCIM creates, for the first time, a unified view where the entire data center fabric, LAN and SAN, appears on the physical map with real operational data. This is especially valuable in environments with multiple data centers (such as the two sites of the Ministry of Justice), where information becomes even more scattered.

The integration addresses the need to have Cisco DCNM data available in iTRACS DCIM, avoiding manual entry or updating of monitored values.

• Platform integration: connection between Cisco DCNM and iTRACS DCIM through their respective REST APIs.

• Asset synchronization:  automatic identification of the same switch in both platforms by IP address, serial number and name.

• Relationship management: a relationship file is maintained so that identified matches can be reused in subsequent runs.

• Log management:​ logs are generated for the actions performed in each cycle, making it easier to detect and resolve errors.

• Configurable execution frequency: the process runs every 15 minutes by default and can be adapted to each customer’s needs.