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Feedback on first SD-WAN Design

Uhmazing
Level 1
Level 1

Hello,


I just created my first simple SD-WAN Design for my internship (attached below).

Would this be a valid design to demonstrate? Or are there things I need to add/change?

Thanks in advance.

6 Replies 6

Hi 

In the spoke sites I would add Tloc extensions between the vEdges to provide resiliency, as you can use all the transports and also add the ability to have application aware routing policies if required. 

Hello, thank you for your response.

I currently have this. Would that be correct as well?

 

SD-WAN Design2.png

sdipippo
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hi Uhmazing,

 

Your newer design looks better than the original. It does cover a variety of use-cases.

 

The one recommendation I have for you is that I usually don't design data centers to have TLOC extension links. Instead, I terminate the WAN transports with some other hardware and then connect the vEdges to that. For example, get a /29 subnet from the internet provider, then physically terminate the link from the provider with a layer 2 switch to split the circuit to each vEdge. Give each vEdge internet interface its own IP in the /29 range. For MPLS, terminate the link with a non-sd-wan layer-3 device like an ASR and run BGP between the ASR and the MPLS PE Router. Then, on the vEdge MPLS interfaces, configure static default routes pointing at the ASR. This has worked well for me. What I've described is similar to your site id 1 design. What you haven't captured at site 1 is the circuit-terminating devices like the L2 switch and the L3 ASR to terminate the circuits, but the reality of it is that the provider is very unlikely to give you two physical connections for the same circuit at a site, so you'll need those. It's also unlikely that anyone would have two internet circuits and two MPLS circuits at a remote site or even at the data center.

The reason I don't like TLOC extension in the data center is basically because:

1) Its not as "clean" as dedicated TLOC links. TLOC-extension requires reliance on the other router being up to work, whereas direct connections to the WAN transports from each router remove that reliance.

2) You will have a hard time performing horizontal scaling with TLOC extension links in the future. Meaning that if the network scales higher than the SD-WAN router in the data center can manage, then you will have a hard time inserting another pair of headend SD-WAN routers in the data center if you are using TLOC extension.

 

Hope it helps!

Steve

sdipippo
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Here is an example of the data center with "circuit-terminating" non-SD-WAN routers in between the vEdges and the circuits. It prevents the use of TLOC extension

data_center.PNG

Thank you for that. However, does it mean that the design I have is incorrect? Or would it still be valid?

Because I have very little knowledge about SD-WAN and I also have to create a POC of my own design, so I don't really want to make it too complicated.

Hey Uhmazing,

No, your design is valid and will work. However I just wanted you to be aware of some design implications of doing it that way. That being said, I'm sure there are customers out there with this type of data center design.

Thanks,

Steve