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 Specialized Virtual Network Function Manager (SVNFM), ESC tightly integrates with the Cisco Mobility VNFs.
-
ESC can also be utilized as a Generic Virtual Network Function Manager (GVNFM) to provide lifecycle management for both Cisco and third-party VNFs.
Supported Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM)
ESC supports lifecycle management of VNFs on OpenStack, VMware vCenter, vCloud Director, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and so on. For more details, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.
New Features and Enhancements in 5.5
This section describes the features added in Cisco Elastic Services Controller Release 5.5:
-
Support for Multiple VMware vCenter and vCD Connectors—ESC supports multiple VIM connectors to many VIMs of different types by a single instance of ESC.
. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller ETSI NFV MANO User Guide.
-
Enabling Barbican Client in ESC— The OpenStack Barbican client
For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.python-barbicanclient 5.0.1
is integrated in the ESC 5.5 release. -
bootvm.py Supports Python 3 in ESC— ESC supports bootvm.py under Python3 from ESC 5.5. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide .
-
Cisco Elastic Services Controller Script for Encoding ConfD AES Encrypted Strings— ESC provides scripts to encode the AES encrypted strings compatible for use in the config requests. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller User Guide.
-
VMware vCloud Director (vCD) Version—The VMware vCloud Director (vCD) version is updated. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide.
-
Support for RHEL 8.x— ESC supports RHEL 8.x. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Install and Upgrade Guide
-
ESC Documentation Update—One new guide is introduced in the ESC 5.5 release:
-
Cisco Elastic Services Controller Troubleshooting Guide—Explains the various troublehsooting activities related to ESC Installation, ESC HA, and various ESC Micro-services. For more information, see the Cisco Elastic Services Controller Troubleshooting Guide
-
Deprecated Features
Starting ESC Release 5.4, some of the functionalities are deprecated. The table below lists the deprecated functionalities, and the new functionalities replacing them in ESC:
Deprecated Functionality |
New Functionality |
New in Release |
Deprecation Notice |
Retired in (future) Release |
---|---|---|---|---|
The following Cisco-specific extensions on which serve as placeholders for the definition of fixed addresses and static IP
pools in the SOL001 VNFD:
|
Use
for IP addressing requirements, using |
ESC 5.3 |
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 6.0 |
The Cisco-specific extensions on
. |
Moved to a standardised extension point:
|
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 6.0 |
The Cisco-specific extensions on
to specify the external volume UUID in the resource_id. |
Moved to a standardised data structure:
|
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 6.0 |
Some of the Cisco-specific extensions on
. |
All but allowed_address_pairs have moved to standardised data structures on
and
|
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 6.0 |
The Cisco-specific extensions on an out-of-band Security Group. |
Moved to a standardised data structure:
|
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 5.4 |
ESC 6.0 |
Starting with Cisco ESC Release 5.3, support for the following may end in any of the future releases without additional notice:
-
The deprecated VMware vCenter versions 5.5 and 6.0.
-
The deprecated VMware vCloud Director (vCD) version 8.2.
-
The deprecated D-MONA 1:1 mapping
For more information, see the release documents available at http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/elastic-services-controller-esc/tsd-products-support-series-home.html.
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 5.5 release.
Bug ID |
Description |
CSCvy49845 | ESC 5.4-86 Switchover does not generate status 5200 Trap |
Resolved Bugs
The table below lists the resolved issues in the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 5.5 release.
Bug ID |
Description |
CSCvu55090 | Network-VNI re-write fails to delete the un-referenced network from ESC |
CSCvw78696 | Deleting an unauthenticated VIM connector can stall up to 4min before DELETE_VIM_CONNECTOR received |
CSCvx18901 | Successful Retry of a failed instantiate VNF request is not overriding the custom port names |
CSCvx25302 | Properties of stored custom actions used in a MONA rule are not supplied after restart/failover |
CSCvx47960 | Active-Active: ESC health fails while performing simple upgrade from 5.3 to 5.4 |
CSCvx50691 | CSP deployment using CREATE_ISO in dep xml missing read permissions on created day0 file on NFS |
CSCvx85118 | Config Parameter Sorting Issue |
CSCvy25010 | Active-Standby: In-service upgrade (both multi-level and direct) from 5.1 to 5.4 fails |
CSCvy39240 | ESCManager REST API error after upgrade from 5.2 to 5.4 |
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 | |||
Step 2 |
At the Log In screen, enter your registered Cisco.com username and password; then, click Log In. The Bug Search page opens.
|
||
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:
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 5.5, 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 ETSI NFV MANO Guide
-
Cisco Elastic Services Controller Administration Guide
-
Cisco Elastic Services Controller Troubleshooting 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: