Benefits of Catena
• Increases wire-speed performance.
• Adds zero-latency to traffic.
• Allows you to insert additional appliances with minimal configuration changes to existing device
• Deploys appliances with zero-touch feature. Catena does not need special header or data path packet
• Provides selective traffic chaining using ACLs. For example, any traffic entering at the ingress port is
• Redirects line-rate traffic to multiple appliances.
• Monitors health of the devices using PING (ICMP), TCP, UDP, or DNS probes. Catena sends periodic
Benefits of Catena
Catena offers a range of features for chaining devices without affecting the existing topology or configuration.
Catena provides you the following benefits:
• Segmentation of traffic.
• CAPEX savings.
• OPEX savings: without catena, you need to perform VLAN stitching or create a default gateway, which
• Provides Telemetry and analytics.
• Without catena, either all traffic is in a chain or not in a chain. Catena allows secure traffic partitioning
• Catena is also a platform, for which users can write applications.
Licensing Requirements for Catena
Product
Cisco NX-OS
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series NX-OS Catena Configuration Guide, Release 7.x
4
architecture, and so not require complex changes to the wiring.
modification that is compatible with your existing hardware and software. As a result any appliance
works without any special certification or support from the vendor.
matched against your ACL. If the traffic matches your ACL it is ingested into the traffic chain.
probe packets to all the appliances. When an appliance responds in a healthy manner within a specified
time, it is used to load balance traffic. Catena also handles automatic failure. Note that at the time of
failure, you do not need to intervene.
is hard to deploy and hard to add or remove devices.
through multiple chains. Without catena, you cannot create multiple chains using the same network
elements.
License Requirement
Catena requires a Network Services license. For a complete explanation
of the Cisco NX-OS licensing scheme and how to obtain and apply
licenses, see the Cisco NX-OS Licensing Guide.
Configuring the Catena Solution
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