Tuesday, February 10, 2015

VxLAN Overview

Virtual Extensible LAN, VXLAN, is another layer 2 overlay network technology that came into existence to initially address particular problems:
•In massively scaled virtualized data centers, the 4096 VLAN limitation implied through a 12 bit long dot1q tag played a significant role to come up with a more scalable solution.

•The static nature of trunk provisioning is another key driver. One of the most attractive aspects of virtualization is the short deployment timelines brought by the simplified deployment of server workloads, but these were hampered by a slow network deployment time.

•Many of these virtual deployments require layer 2 adjacency of virtual machines, especially in clustered environments. The workload deployments preferably can be placed anywhere in the network irrespective of physical boundaries.

VXLAN initially was conceived as a host overlay technology as the basic function was executed at the hypervisor virtual switch layer.

VXLAN Key Concepts & Basic Operation

some key concepts to consider deploying VXLAN. Virtual Tunnel End Point (VTEP). As the name implies, the VTEP corresponds to the IP address that defines the beginning or the end of the overlay tunnel. Depending on the role, the VTEP can reside in many places. Initially, it was defined on the virtual switch, but later on, it found its way to other devices such as physical switches, firewalls, routers and so forth. Depending on the location of the VTEP, devices can play different roles in the VXLAN construct. At the edge, the virtual switch played the role of encapsulation or de-capsulation device, ingesting the packets from the virtual machine and inserting or stripping of the correct VXLAN header respectively.

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