NSX VRF-Lite : Route Leak

Welcome Back!!

In the last blog we discussed about VRF-Lite introduction & configuration, which is a feature to achieve multi-tenancy (Network isolation) in VMware NSX.

This is part-2 of VRF-Lite series, where we will perform route leak among two different VRF.

Above is the topology which we are going to discuss in this blog.

• Let’s first validate the routing isolation among both VRF’s.
• Aim is to leak route for the /32 IPs, that is 172.16.40.11 should be able to communicate with 172.16.20.11 & vice versa.

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Since we have validated the routing isolation among two VRF instances, lets talk about Route leak among them.

• Route leak is only applicable for multi-tier topology, that is… there must be a Tier-1 connected to Tier-0,

reason being, NSX achieve route-leak via static route on VRF-Tier0 pointing it towards Tier-1 DR uplink. (Refer below diagram)

Capture Tier-1 DR IP address for VRF RED

Tier-1 DR IP address can be captured from NSX UI as well as from NSX edge-node CLI.

Capture Tier-1 DR IP address for VRF BLUE

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Added captured Tier-1 DR IP in the network topology for easier reference.

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Configure Static Route on VRF-RED.

• 172.16.20.11/32 (VRF Blue VM) > Next hop > 100.64.0.5 (DR Uplink VRF-Blue-Tier-1) with scope – VRF Blue

Configure Static Route on VRF-BLUE

• 172.16.40.11/32 (VRF RED VM) > Next hop > 100.64.0.3 (DR Uplink VRF-RED-Tier-1) with scope – VRF RED

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Route leak Validation –

• via Ping – Run a ping test cross VRF.

• via Route learning – validate /32 static route learning which we configured above.

This is it for today’s blog, will discuss any new topic/content in our upcoming blogs.

PS: Any Improvement points or suggestions are welcome.

—–Thank You—–

Prashant Pandey