Revised: June 16, 2015,
NX-API
About NX-API
On Cisco Nexus devices, command-line interfaces (CLIs) are run only on the device. NX-API improves the accessibility of these
CLIs by making them available outside of the switch by using HTTP/HTTPS. You can use this extension to the existing Cisco Nexus
CLI system on the Cisco Nexus 5000 and 6000 Series devices. NX-API supports show commands and configurations.
NX-API supports JSON-RPC.
Transport
NX-API uses HTTP/HTTPS as its transport. CLIs are encoded into the HTTP/HTTPS POST body.
The NX-API backend uses the Nginx HTTP server. The Nginx process, and all of its children processes, are under Linux cgroup
protection where the CPU and memory usage is capped. If the Nginx memory usage exceeds the cgroup limitations, the Nginx process
is restarted and restored.
Message Format
NX-API is an enhancement to the Cisco Nexus 5000 and 6000 Series CLI system, which supports XML output. NX-API also supports
JSON output format for specific commands.
• NX-API XML output presents information in a user-friendly format.
Note
• NX-API XML does not map directly to the Cisco NX-OS NETCONF implementation.
• NX-API XML output can be converted into JSON.
Security
NX-API supports HTTPS. All communication to the device is encrypted when you use HTTPS.
NX-API is integrated into the authentication system on the device. Users must have appropriate accounts to access the device through
NX-API. NX-API uses HTTP basic authentication. All requests must contain the username and password in the HTTP header.
You should consider using HTTPS to secure your user's login credentials.
Note
You can enable NX-API by using the feature manager CLI command. NX-API is disabled by default.
NX-API provides a session-based cookie, nxapi_auth when users first successfully authenticate. With the session cookie, the username
and password are included in all subsequent NX-API requests that are sent to the device. The username and password are used with
the session cookie to bypass performing the full authentication process again. If the session cookie is not included with subsequent
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