Introduction

Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) is a Virtual Network Functions Manager (VNFM), which performs lifecycle management of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs).

The Cisco Elastic Services Controller (ESC) promotes agility, flexibility, and programmability in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments - and offers comprehensive automated lifecycle management capabilities. By design, Cisco ESC is built as an open and a modular system. It provides a single point of control to manage all aspects of VNF lifecycle for generic virtual network functions (VNFs) in a dynamic environment. Drawing on industry standards and open APIs, you can control the full lifecycle of all of your virtualized resources, whether using Cisco or third-party VNFs, allowing you to choose best-of-breed industry solutions.

  • As part of the Cisco Orchestration Suite, ESC is packaged with Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) and Cisco NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) bundle. This is available within Cisco Solutions such as Cisco Managed Services Accelerator (MSX).

  • As a standalone product, ESC is available as a Virtual Network Function Manager bundled with several Cisco VNFs such as VPN, vRouter and many others.

Supported Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM)

ESC supports lifecycle management of VNFs on OpenStack, VMware vCenter, vCloud Director and Amazon Web Services (AWS). For more details, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

New Features and Enhancements of 4.4

This section describes the features added in Cisco Elastic Services Controller Release 4.4.

  • Updating Tenant Quota—ESC supports updating quotas for tenants. You can also use the REST API to create new tenants, or modify quotas of an existing tenant in ESC. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.

  • Cisco Cloud Services Platform (CSP) 2100 Support—You can install ESC on the Cisco Cloud Services Platform 2100 software or hardware. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

  • ESC ETSI Compliance—ESC is now ETSI SOL001 v0.10.0 compliant.

  • ETSI Multi-VIM Support—ETSI supports deploying VNFs to multiple VIMs using the same VNFD package. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.

  • ESC Portal Enhancements

    • Perform manual recovery of VNFs and VMs.

    • View a detailed error report of the error events on the notifications page.

    • You can clear notifications on the notifications page.

For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide and Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.

Cisco Elastic Services Controller Bugs

For a complete list of open and resolved bugs for this release, use the Cisco Bug Search tool.

Open Bugs

The table below lists the open issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 4.4 release.

Table 1. Open Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 4.4

Bug ID

Description

CSCvn49917

ESC will not be able to delete VM after allowing update locator
CSCvn53293

Service can get stuck in INERT STATE when recovering a deployment and all VIM/VNF communication lost

Resolved Bugs

The table below lists the resolved issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 4.4 release.

Table 2. Resolved Bugs in Cisco Elastic Services Controller 4.4

Bug ID

Description

CSCvn50464

Service can become unmanageable if ESC failover happens while performing recovery

Cisco Bug Search Tool

Bug Search Tool (BST), the online successor to Bug Toolkit, is designed to improve our customers' effectiveness in network risk management and device troubleshooting.

BST allows partners and customers to search for software bugs based on product, release, and keyword, and aggregates key data such as bug details, product, and version. The service has provision to filter bugs based on credentials to provide external and internal bug views for the search input.

To use the BST to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release:

Procedure

Step 1

Go to http://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch.

Step 2

At the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password; then, click Log In. The Bug Search page opens.

Note 

If you do not have a Cisco.com username and password, you can register for them at http://tools.cisco.com/RPF/register/register.do.

Step 3

To search for a specific bug, enter the bug ID in the Search For field and press Return.

Step 4

To search for bugs in the current release:

  1. In the Search For field, enter a keyword and press Return. (Leave the other fields empty).

  2. When the search results are displayed, use the filter tools to find the types of bugs you are looking for. You can search for bugs by modified date, status, severity, and so forth.
    Tip 

    To export the results to a spreadsheet, click the Export All to Spreadsheet link.

See Bug Search Tools & Resources on Cisco.com. For more details on the tool overview and functionalities, check out the help page, located at http://www.cisco.com/web/applicat/cbsshelp/help.html

Accessibility Features in Cisco ESC

For a list of accessibility features in Cisco ESC 4.4, see Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) on the Cisco website, or contact accessibility@cisco.com.

All product documents are accessible except for images, graphics, and some charts. If you would like to receive the product documentation in audio format, braille, or large print, contact accessibility@cisco.com.

Related Documentation

The following documents are available for Cisco Elastic Services Controller:

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller NETCONF API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller REST API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI API Guide

  • Cisco Elastic Services Controller Deployment Attributes

You can access the documents at:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/elastic-services-controller-esc/tsd-products-support-series-home.html.