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MPLS VPN Solution Installation Requirements

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MPLS VPN Solution Installation Requirements

System Recommendations

MPLS VPN Solution Workstation Recommendations

Cisco IP Manager (Lite), Version 2 Workstation Recommendations

NetFlow Collector Device Recommendations

NetFlow Documentation

PE and CE Router Recommendations

Mounting a Locally Attached CD-ROM Drive

Mounting a Remotely Attached CD-ROM Drive

Exporting the CD-ROM Drive from a Remote Solaris Host


MPLS VPN Solution Installation Requirements

Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution (hereafter referred to as MPLS VPN Solution) is a network management system that defines and monitors virtual private network (VPN) services for service providers. MPLS VPN Solution allows service providers to seamlessly provision and manage intranet and extranet VPNs. The product provides the aspect of operations management that addresses flow-through provisioning, service auditing, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) measurement of IP-based MPLS VPN environments. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an emerging industry standard upon which tag switching is based.

MPLS VPN Solution focuses on provisioning, auditing, and monitoring the links between the customer's routers through the providers's network. This product deals only with the provider's edge routers and the customer's edge routers. A customer edge router (CE) is connected to a provider edge router (PE) in such a way that the customer's traffic is encapsulated and transparently sent to other CEs, thus creating a virtual private network. The MPLS VPN Solution provisioning engine accesses the configuration files on both the CE and PE to compute the necessary changes to those files that are required to support the service on the PE-CE link.

Figure 1-1 MPLS VPN Solution in the Service Provider Network

As illustrated in Figure 1-1, Cisco requires that the MPLS VPN Solution software is installed on its own dedicated system and Cisco IP Manager is installed on its own system, with the two workstations connected on a LAN. Note that Oracle 8.0.5 is installed on the Cisco IP Manager workstation. This arrangement comprises the network management subnet.

This chapter describes the system recommendations for the Cisco MPLS VPN Solution workstation, as well as the Cisco IP Manager and NetFlow Collector systems. This chapter also tells you how to mount a locally attached or remotely attached CD-ROM drive.

System Recommendations

The system recommendations are organized in the following categories:

•MPLS VPN Solution Workstation Recommendations

•Cisco IP Manager (Lite), Version 2 Workstation Recommendations

•NetFlow Collector Device Recommendations

•PE and CE Router Recommendations

MPLS VPN Solution Workstation Recommendations

The system recommendations for the MPLS VPN Solution workstation are as follows:

Table 1-1 Workstation Recommendations for MPLS VPN Solution

Number of CEs

Workstation

RAM

Disk Space

Up to 500

Minimum: Sun Ultra™ 60 (1 CPU)

Production: Sun Enterprise™ 250 (2 CPUs)

1 GB

20+ GB

500 to 1,500

Minimum: Sun Ultra™ 60 (2 CPUs)

Production: Sun Enterprise™ 250 (2 CPUs)

1 GB

20+ GB

1,500 3,000

Sun Enterprise™ 450 (4 CPUs)

1 GB

20+ GB

Over 3,000

Sun Enterprise™ 450 (4 CPUs)

1 GB

20+ GB


Operating System

Currently, the MPLS VPN Solution software can run only under Solaris 2.6. The installation terminates if the operating system is not Solaris 2.6.

Caution When you install Solaris 2.6, be sure to choose either the Developer System Support or the Entire Distribution software groups. Do not choose the End User System software group. The Developer System Support and Entire Distribution software groups contain the software required for a correct operating system installation (such as the SUNWbtool and SUNWsprot packages).

If you encounter difficulty in the Solaris 2.6 installation, see the "Troubleshooting the Solaris Installation" section.

Internet Browser and SA Agent Recommendations

•Internet browser: Netscape 4.5 or later is recommended.

Note Running the Netscape browser with MPLS VPN Solution 1.1 requires the Java Plug-in 1.12_004 for Solaris 2.4 to 2.6. You can retrieve this plug-in from the following site:
http://java.sun.com/products/plugin/1.1.2/download.html

•To include Service Assurance Agent (SA Agent) support, use IOS 12.0(7)T or later, using the IP feature set (i-train).

Cisco IP Manager (Lite), Version 2 Workstation Recommendations

Prior to installing the MPLS VPN Solution, you must install Cisco IP Manager (Lite) Version 2, which is bundled with this product. Cisco IP Manager is the element manager for MPLS VPN Solution.

Note You must install CIPM on a separate machine. The CIPM workstation must be connected on a LAN to the MPLS VPN Solution workstation.

For information on how to install CIPM, refer to the Cisco IP Manager (Lite) User's Guide: Version 2.0 distributed with the product. This guide also contains CIPM 2.0 installation information: refer to "Installing and Starting Cisco IP Manager 2.0."

The system recommendations for the CIPM workstation are as follows:

•Operating system: Solaris 2.6 (on all client and server machines), using the Common Desktop Environment (CDE)

–Solaris SUNWsprot and SUNWbtool packages

•Hardware: Minimum of Sun Ultra™ 60 (1 processor) workstation

•RAM: 512 MB RAM with 500 MB of swap space

•Disk Space: 10 GB

•Database: Oracle 8.0.5 Enterprise license and installation

See "Installing and Running Oracle for the MPLS VPN Solution Software," for Oracle installation instructions. For details, refer to the Oracle 8 Installation Guide, Release 8.0.5 for Sun SPARC Solaris 2.x.

NetFlow Collector Device Recommendations

FlowCollector generates output files containing aggregated data. These files require additional disk space; the exact amount of disk space required depends on the flow arrival rate, collection interval, number of aggregation schemes specified, binary versus ASCII data file types, use of compression, and data file retention policies.

For collection tasks, install NetFlow Collector 3.0 on a separate machine. The Netflow Collector workstation must have a network connection to the PE device.

Note Cisco recommends that each PE in the service provide network have a LAN connection to a NetFlow Collector device.

•Operating System: Solaris 2.6.

•Hardware: Sun Ultra™ 1 with a CD-ROM drive

•Memory: A minimum 128 MB of RAM with 512 MB of swap space. Additional memory is advisable.

•Disk Space: 20+ GB

FlowCollector requires at least 2 MB of disk space for its binary and configuration files.

NetFlow Documentation

The entire installation process is explained in detail in the NetFlow FlowCollector Installation and User Guide in Chapter 2, "Installing and Configuring FlowCollector." Installation troubleshooting information is located in the NetFlow FlowCollector Installation and User Guide in Appendix A, "Troubleshooting FlowCollector."

For details on setting up NetFlow accounting in MPLS VPN Solution software, refer to "MPLS VPN NetFlow Accounting" in Chapter 5 of the Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS VPN Solution User Guide.

PE and CE Router Recommendations

For Provider Edge Routers (PEs) and Customer Edge Routers (CEs) in the service provider network, Cisco recommends the following:

•For PEs: Cisco IOS 12.0(5)T or later, using the Service Provider feature set. However, the recommendation is 12.0(7)T. For Inter-Switch Link (ISL) between the PE and CE, the Enterprise feature set is required.

•For CEs: Cisco IOS 11.1 or later. However, to include SA Agent support, use 12.0(7)T or later, using the IP feature set (i-train).

Mounting a Locally Attached CD-ROM Drive

The mount instructions for a locally attached CD-ROM drive for the various operating systems supported by Cisco software are provided in this section.

Step 1 When a CD-ROM drive mount point does not exist, create one as follows:

host# mkdir /cdrom

Note When the CD-ROM drive is already mounted or you are running the volume manager with Solaris on a Sun SPARC system, this mounting step is not necessary.

Step 2 Mount the CD-ROM drive on the mount point.

For Solaris (when not running Volume Management):

host# /usr/sbin/mount -rF hsfs device_name /cdrom

where device is the name of the locally attached CD-ROM drive. For example, to mount the CD-ROM from the local drive named /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0, specify:

host# /usr/sbin/mount -rF hsfs /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0 /cdrom

Mounting a Remotely Attached CD-ROM Drive

The mount instructions for a remotely attached CD-ROM drive for the various operating systems supported by Cisco software are provided in this section. The CD-ROM drive must be mounted on the remote system (following the steps provided in the previous section), the mount point must then be exported, and it must be mounted on the machine where the Cisco NSM software is to be installed.

Exporting the CD-ROM Drive from a Remote Solaris Host

Prior to mounting the CD-ROM drive from the remote host, the device must be made accessible. The following procedures are performed on the remote system where the CD-ROM drive is attached.

To export the CD-ROM drive from a remote Solaris host, follow these steps:

Step 1 When they are not already running, start the following NFS mount daemons:

host# /usr/lib/nfs/nfsd 8
host# /usr/lib/nfs/mountd

Step 2 Share the mount point from the remote system:

host# /usr/sbin/share -F nfs -o ro /cdrom/MPLS_VPN_dir

Step 3 Verify the remote host is exporting the mount point. The listing produced by this command should include the /cdrom mount point.

host# /usr/sbin/share

Step 4 On the client machine, verify the mount point on the remote host:

host# /usr/sbin/showmount -e remote_server | grep cdrom

where remote_server is the name of the remote host where the CD-ROM drive is mounted.

Step 5 On the client machine, mount the remotely installed CD-ROM device:

host# /usr/sbin/mount remote_server:/cdrom local_mount_point

where local_mount_point is the mount point on the client machine for the remotely mounted CD-ROM drive.