Hardware Distributed VXLAN Using the Spine/Leaf Two-Layer Architecture
Figure 1 shows the hardware distributed VXLAN using the spine/leaf two-layer architecture. Spine nodes and gateways are converged and function as VXLAN egress devices, and leaf nodes function as distributed VXLAN gateways.
- Overall design:
- Flexibly configure the number of spine nodes and leaf nodes, as shown in Figure 2.
- Spine nodes and leaf nodes are connected at Layer 3 and ECMP are configured on the entire network, achieving load balancing of traffic, non-blocking forwarding, and fast convergence.
- Deploy ARP broadcast suppression globally and traffic suppression on an interface to prevent broadcast traffic from being flooded. ARP proxy can be also configured, which is the secondary choice. Then traffic is imported to the corresponding gateway, and the gateway monitors Layer 2 traffic.
- Spine node:
- Spine nodes can constitute an M-LAG or a stack. It is easier to deploy and maintain the stack, but the service interruption time is long during version upgrade. M-LAG is therefore recommended.
- The spine node is used as the RR of BGP EVPN.
- It is recommended that the CE12800 be used as the spine node to meet expansion requirements of the future network.
- Leaf node:
- When NICs of a server are connected in load balancing mode, leaf nodes support multiple networking such as the stack, M-LAG, and SVF composed of fixed devices. M-LAG is recommended because of its high reliability. When NICs of a server are connected in active/standby mode, leaf nodes use the standalone mode.
- When server leaf nodes constitute an M-LAG, the Monitor Link group needs to be deployed. The uplink is associated with all downlinks, preventing traffic interruption when the uplink fails.
- Router:
- Routers and spine nodes are fully meshed, ECMP-based forwarding is implemented between spine nodes and routers, and links between routers and between spine nodes are used as backup links.
- Routers are used as egress devices and are connected to extranets.