Product Brief

VXLAN Bridges Virtual and Physical Networks

to the Cloud
Arista and VMware have co- authored a new standard in cloud
Inside networking: the Virtual eXtensible LAN (VXLAN). VXLAN is a
tunneling mechanism that runs between virtual or physical
VXLAN switches and enables applications to be deployed and moved
A new network technology developed by
between any server within the Data Center regardless of IP
Arista and VMware that enables stateful
VM mobility, within the data center beyond subnet or physical host location. This enables IT departments
L3 boundaries. This increases the agility to dynamically scale network architectures to support capacity
of applications and enables workloads to on demand and workload mobility regardless of geography
be deployed to better meet the business
and existing IP addressing. VXLAN also overcomes scalability
needs.
and segmentation limitations which exist within today’s
Why?
By overcoming the need of flat, layer 2 data center protocols such as TRILL, Spanning Tree, and
networks, customers are able to take others. Unlike other network virtualization overlay models,
advantage of more scalable, proven VXLAN uses proven IP protocols and requires no change
layer 3 technologies within their Data
to the underlying IP architecture or existing data center
Center without sacrificing crucial
application mobility. Arista’s support infrastructure.
and implementation of VXLAN promises
greater scale, service integrations,
accounting visibility and demand
management without restricting device
interoperability or workload mobility.

Who Cares?
Virtualization and Network administrators
who want to increase the scalability or
mobility of their virtual architectures
between data centers and/or between
routed domains while retaining full
workload portability.

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 Product Brief

What is VXLAN?
VXLAN is a network encapsulation and segmentation protocol enabling applications
to be deployed on any server, on any network, at any time. It accomplishes this
by encapsulating the application’s MAC and IP packets within a UDP header and
utilizing IP multicast groups to emulate broadcast domains. VXLAN encapsulation
Inside and decapsulation is done at the Virtual Tunnel End Point (VTEP) located at the
virtual or physical edge of the network. Because VXLAN networks are not bound by
IP subnets or L2 boundaries, VXLAN can utilize the existing L3 network topology.
Large Layer 2 broadcast and failuredomains can be eliminated and traded for more
stable L3 networks supporting greater scale, better multi-pathing and milli-second
convergence. In addition, previous scalability limitations due to MAC address table
exhaustion and limited VLAN tags are replaced with the VXLAN header allowing for
up to 16 million customer segments.

What is Arista doing to enhance VXLAN?

A major benefit of VXLAN is that it seamlessly integrates on top existing IP networks
without the hassle of major upgrades or infrastructure replacement. From a
physical network perspective, VXLAN requires both IP routing and IP multicast to
be deployed. Arista’s EOS supports robust Layer 3 protocols and PIM support across
the entire networking portfolio. With many Arista switches supporting in excess of
40,000 IGMP groups, VXLAN scale is far greater than current VLAN tags for larger
scale and multi-tenant data centers.

Arista is also supporting VXLAN gateway functionality by offering VXLAN

encapsulation and decapsulation capabilities in hardware. This support for
hardware VTEP, or virtual tunnel end point, capabilities will extend the reach of
VXLAN enabled networks to non-virtualized hardware and appliances and allow for
interoperability between the VXLAN and non-VXLAN world without re- designing
network infrastructure or restructuring applications.

VMtracer for VXLAN - Critical Physical, Virtual and Cloud Visibilisty

VMTracer provides visibility, real time accounting and network automation through
Arista’s Extensible Operating System (EOS). These functionality’s are vital when
managing and troubleshooting VXLAN tunneled networks. In real-time Data Center
production environments, VMs are being deployed dynamically, vMotion and VM-FT
are used as an integral part of change control and IT business continuity is expected.
The addition of VXLAN visibility to Arista’s VMtracer product suite gives networking
and server admins the necessary tools for management, audit and troubleshooting
of these dynamic cloud Data Centers.

VM Tracer with VXLAN Extensions within the Arista EOS framework is designed to
provide the real-time and historical audit capabilities along with virtual network
integration that guarantees visibility and troubleshooting are simpler and more
effective within the virtual, physical and tunneled cloud environments..

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 Product Brief

The perennial challenge of any encapsulation technology is troubleshooting and

management visibility into traffic patterns for provisioning. Because all packets are
UDP encapsulated, most host attributes including MAC and IP addresses are hidden.
Since VM’s are constantly moving around, this visibility into the hosts identity as
well as host location and network attributes is vital for maintaining and operating a
virtualized data center. Arista is adding VXLAN support to VM Tracer, Arista’s unique
offering that directly mounts the vSphere API from each participating switch and
enables full VM auto-discovery and auto-provisioning. Arista’s VM Tracer with VXLAN
will enable the network administrator to know and discover:

• The total list of network segments that have been created

• Which hosts are participating in a given network segment

• Which network segments are active on a given switch

• The relationship between physical addressing and virtual addressing

• Which multicast addresses are being used, in real time, for which segments

• Which virtual machines are generating significant network traffic such as

vMotion or VM-FT on each segment

Arista VM Tracer with VXLAN Extensions is designed to work natively with VXLAN
system to ensure any VM can be deployed on any server, at any time, and automate
the network provisioning the use of open APIs and integration with Arista’s EOS.

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 Product Brief

Summary
The introduction of VXLAN has revolutionized cloud and virtual machine
deployments. By removing locality and IP subnetting restrictions, the idea of
deploying any application, any where is a reality and can be achieved without
forklift upgrades, re-designing the network or altering the application. Arista’s
Inside support for VXLAN gateway is what makes bridging the physical and virtual worlds
possible and enables a truly programmable, automated cloud. By enhancing the
VM Tracer feature within Arista EOS gives the necessary visibility into the tunneled
network required for management and troubleshooting. VXLAN along with open
APIs supported through EOS are the building blocks to cloud and the Arista
Software Defined Cloud Networking.

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Market Street, Suite 800 10 Tara Boulevard
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Copyright © 2016 Arista Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CloudVision, and EOS are registered trademarks and Arista Networks
is a trademark of Arista Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders. Information in this
document is subject to change without notice. Certain features may not yet be available. Arista Networks, Inc. assumes no
responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. 01/12

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