It's probably safe to say that service provider networking is pretty unique. One particular design pattern - Looking Glasses - is extremely useful for complex dynamically routed networks. I'd really like to shift the gatekeeping needle here - networks that are complex enough to benefit from a looking glass should move …

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BGP Advantages in Virtualized Networking BGP is more like an Application BGP, by design, is a lot more capable than most typical routing protocols. Here are a few ways MP-BGP/BGPv4 is fundamentally unique: Extensible: MP-BGP can store and run multiple address families (AFIs) and subsequent address families (SAFIs). …

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The next step is to get IPv6 up and running with NSX-T! This should be pretty short - as with existing deployments of NSX-T, most of the difficult work is already completed. Here are a few preparatory steps to be performed before getting started: Ensure MP-BGP is on and that the data center fabric is running the …

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As is probably obvious from the sidebar, I'm pretty enthusiastic about IPv6 - for quite a few reasons, not least of which is implementing a new Layer 3 protocol after guys like Vint Cerf already did most of the cool stuff. However, I didn't want to simply complete this task - most people complete all of these tasks …

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First off, let's cover what's been built so far: To set up an anycast vIP in NSX-T after standing up your base infrastructure (already depicted and configured), all you have to do is stand up a load balanced vIP at multiple sites. NSX-T takes care of the rest. Here's how: Create a new load balancing pool. Create a new …

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Since most of NSX-T runs in a firewall mode of sorts, it's probably worthwhile to discuss on of the less well-known routing protocol features - Graceful Restart. As published for BGP, IETF RFC 4724 outlines a mechanism for "preserving forwarding traffic during a BGP restart." This definition may be a little …

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Now that the primary infrastructure components for NSX-T are in place, it is now possible to build-out the actual functions that NSX-T is designed to provide. A friendly suggestion, make sure your Fabric is healthy before doing this: NSX-T differs from NSX-V quite a bit here. Irregular topologies between edge routers …

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Since NSX-T 2.5 just came out, it's about time to do a full rebuild and getting started guide. NSX-T differs greatly from NSX-V in that the initial setup is quite a bit more complicated and doesn't have many guardrails or direct paths to initial set-up. We'll be skipping the appliance deployment, because if you have …

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So far, all examples to date have been extremely simple, and stand rather well on their own (OSPF Clos would work just FINE in a campus network if you have cheap L3) but may not effectively address some more advanced use cases. In short, we're about to enter niche territory. Generally speaking, BGP is regarded as the …

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Before we get too far - this is going to be a simple topology, relatively speaking. I'll be putting the switch configs on my GitHub account as well when I get to that point. The diagram is as follows: This was drawn programmatically with drawthe.net. File is here

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