Deploying the AVS
The Cisco Application Virtual Switch (AVS) is an alternative to the vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) we set up earlier.
The AVS is based around the Nexus 1000v switch but customized for ACI.
The benefits of the AVS are that it allows you to create a Virtual Tunnel End Point (VTEP) on the VMWare hosts. This enhances scalability (over the VDS) as we are not bound by a one-hop limit. One of the differences between using the DVS and the AVS is that the DVS uses LLDP for VM discovery whereas the AVS uses OpFlex.
Note
We need to install an additional plugin to vCenter to be able to run the AVS. You can download it from https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=282646785&softwareid=286280428&release=1.1 You will require a CCO account and the specific entitlement.
How to do it…
Earlier in this chapter, we created a vCenter domain. As part of this, we created a VDS. The other option would be to use the Cisco AVS (refer to the figure in step 5 in the Creating VMM domains...