Cisco Nexus Metrics

Prerequisites

Ensure that:

• the upstream Cisco OS receiver or cisco-exporter access is configured
• the switch connectivity and credentials are validated upstream
• the Prometheus-compatible endpoints are reachable from the AppDynamics scrape path

Configure the Upstream Cisco OS Receiver

The AppDynamics scrape layer does not connect to the switches directly. It scrapes a Prometheus endpoint exposed by an upstream OpenTelemetry Collector that runs the cisco_os receiver.

The upstream flow for Nexus system metrics is:

• the OpenTelemetry Collector connects to the switches with the cisco_os receiver
• the collector exports Prometheus metrics on its Prometheus endpoint
• Infrastructure Visibility scrapes that Prometheus endpoint

There are two Nexus sources:

• the cisco_os receiver provides switch-level system, packet, error, and interface-status metrics
• the cisco-exporter endpoint provides direct interface byte counters

Deploy the collector from the reference config, then replace the environment-specific values before applying:

• reference config: appd-otlp-collector-template.yaml

• minimum collector image: ghcr.io/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:0.148.0

• values to replace: switch host IPs, SSH port/username/password (prefer a Secret), collector namespace, and the exposed Prometheus service name

Shared collector with Intersight. This is the same appd-otlp-collector-template.yaml referenced by Cisco Intersight Metrics. The collector runs two pipelines in parallel: metrics (OTLP ingest from intersight-otel) and metrics/cisco-os-metrics (the receiver block below). Both pipelines export to a single Prometheus endpoint exposed as the intersight-appd-prometheus-service:9464 service. Deploy this manifest once; do not stand up a second collector for Nexus. If your environment runs Nexus only, you may rename the Prometheus Service in the manifest before applying.

Template collector receiver block:

receivers:
  cisco_os:
    collection_interval: 60s
    timeout: 30s
    scrapers:
      system:
        metrics:
          cisco.device.up:
            enabled: true
          system.cpu.utilization:
            enabled: true
          system.memory.utilization:
            enabled: true
      interfaces:
        metrics:
          system.network.io:
            enabled: true
          system.network.errors:
            enabled: true
          system.network.packet.dropped:
            enabled: true
          system.network.packet.count:
            enabled: true
          system.network.interface.status:
            enabled: true
    devices:
      - name: "core-switch-01"
        host: "<switch-ip-1>"
        port: 22
        auth:
          username: "<username>"
          password: "<password>"
      - name: "core-switch-02"
        host: "<switch-ip-2>"
        port: 22
        auth:
          username: "<username>"
          password: "<password>"

exporters:
  prometheus:
    endpoint: 0.0.0.0:9464
    resource_to_telemetry_conversion:
      enabled: true

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:                       # used by intersight-otel via OTLP 
     receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [memory_limiter, batch]
      exporters: [prometheus]
    metrics/cisco-os-metrics:
      receivers: [cisco_os]
      processors: [memory_limiter, batch]
      exporters: [prometheus]

Both pipelines export to the intersight-appd-prometheus-service:9464 service. Before enabling AppDynamics scraping, validate http://intersight-appd-prometheus-service.<collector-namespace>.svc.cluster.local:9464/metrics returns the system_network_* families.

Enable Prometheus Scraping for Cisco Nexus

The following are system metrics source examples from this repo:

• service: intersight-appd-prometheus-service (the shared collector Service from appd-otlp-collector-template.yaml; rename in the manifest if your environment runs Nexus only)
• namespace: <collector-namespace>
• port: 9464
• path: /metrics

Replace these with the Prometheus service name and namespace used by your collector deployment. The service name intersight-appd-prometheus-service is shared with the Intersight path because the same collector serves both pipelines.

Interface byte source:

• service: cisco-exporter-service
• namespace: cisco-exporter
• port: 9362
• path: /metrics

Configure Machine Agent Ingestion

Infrastructure Visibility Prometheus monitoring loads both Nexus-related exporter files through prometheus-config-template.yaml.

To activate this path:

• include both Nexus exporter YAML files in the prometheus-exporters ConfigMap
• ensure that the main include list references both files
• apply the ConfigMap update and re-run the Infrastructure Visibility Helm upgrade

Before enabling the Cisco OS receiver scrape, update the exporter YAML service discovery fields to the service name and namespace used by your collector deployment.

Exporter YAML Contract

Expected AppDynamics Custom Metric Paths

Create Custom Dashboard

The custom dashboard script generates ready-to-import AppDynamics dashboard JSON files from a set of templates. You supply your environment's node names and, optionally, the custom metric path prefixes. The script substitutes them into the templates and writes the JSON files. See Create Custom Dashboards for AI Pods.

Troubleshooting