Building Data Centers with VXLAN BGP EVPN: A Cisco NX-OS Perspective

The complete guide to building and managing next-generation data center network fabrics with VXLAN and BGP EVPN

This is the only comprehensive guide and deployment reference for building flexible data center network fabrics with VXLAN and BGP EVPN technologies. Writing for experienced network professionals, three leading Cisco experts address everything from standards and protocols to functions, configurations, and operations.

The authors first explain why and how data center fabrics are evolving, and introduce Cisco’s fabric journey. Next, they review key switch roles, essential data center network fabric terminology, and core concepts such as network attributes, control plane details, and the associated data plane encapsulation.

Building on this foundation, they provide a deep dive into fabric semantics, efficient creation and addressing of the underlay, multi-tenancy, control and data plane interaction, forwarding flows, external interconnectivity, and service appliance deployments. You’ll find detailed tutorials, descriptions, and packet flows that can easily be adapted to accommodate customized deployments. This guide concludes with a full section on fabric management, introducing multiple opportunities to simplify, automate, and orchestrate data center network fabrics.

• Learn how changing data center requirements have driven the evolution to overlays, evolved control planes, and VXLAN BGP EVPN spine-leaf fabrics
• Discover why VXLAN BGP EVPN fabrics are so scalable, resilient, and elastic
• Implement enhanced unicast and multicast forwarding of tenant traffic over the VXLAN BGP EVPN fabric
• Build fabric underlays to efficiently transport uni- and multi-destination traffic
• Connect the fabric externally via Layer 3 (VRF-Lite, LISP, MPLS L3VPN) and Layer 2 (VPC)
• Choose your most appropriate Multi-POD, multifabric, and Data Center Interconnect (DCI) options
• Integrate Layer 4-7 services into the fabric, including load balancers and firewalls
• Manage fabrics with POAP-based day-0 provisioning, incremental day 0.5 configuration, overlay day-1 configuration, or day-2 operations

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction to Programmable Fabric
Chapter 2 VXLAN BGP EVPN Basics
Chapter 3 VXLAN/EVPN Forwarding Characteristics
Chapter 4 The Underlay
Chapter 5 Multitenancy
Chapter 6 Unicast Forwarding
Chapter 7 Multicast Forwarding
Chapter 8 External Connectivity
Chapter 9 Multi-pod, Multifabric, and Data Center Interconnect (DCI)
Chapter 10 Layer 4–7 Services Integration
Chapter 11 Introduction to Fabric Management
Appendix A VXLAN BGP EVPN Implementation Options