Sunday, February 22, 2015

Which is best method to deploy VxLAN: Multicast or Unicast?


Before deploying VxLAN we have to consider it’s underneath deployment model. It could be multicast or unicast. Now the question arises which one is the best for the network. Should we go with Multicast which is as good as broadcast or unicast?

It should be noted that not all deployment types are supported by all devices both physical and virtual. Despite the available hardware and software the best deployment for a particular scenario often depends on the application that will run within the VXLAN. If the application is based on unicast connectivity, in that case unicast mode is preferable. However if you have very large VXLANS with thousands of VM’s on it with each VM being on a separate physical hypervisor then Multicast mode might be better suited.

If the application within a VXLAN relies heavily on either multicast or broadcast messages to keep hosts in sync then this might be a better use case for multicast mode If multicast heavy application is distributed between two physical hypervisors then multicast mode will see no efficiency benefit and unicast mode would be more efficient than multicast mode

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2 comments:

Ashish Gupta said...

good thought. I couldn't relate to the scenarios mentioned

Shivlu Jain said...

like video bridges or some multicast applications like financial institutes are using it...