VXLAN == Virtual eXtensible LAN.
While reading about NSX I was under the impression VXLAN is something VMware cooked up and owns (possibly via Nicira, which is where NSX came from). But turns out that isn’t the case. It was originally created by VMware & Cisco (check out this Register article – a good read) and is actually covered under an RFC 7348. The encapsulation mechanism is standardized, and so is the UDP port used for communication (port number 4789 by the way). A lot of vendors now support VXLAN, and similar to NSX being an implementation of VXLAN we also have Open vSwitch. Nice!
(Note to self: got to read more about Open vSwitch. It’s used in XenServer and is a part of Linux. The *BSDs too support it).
VXLAN is meant to both virtualize Layer 2 and also replace VLANs. You can have up to 16 million VXLANs (the NSX Logical Switches I mentioned earlier). In contrast you are limited to 4094 VLANs. I like the analogy of how VXLAN is to IP addresses how cell phones are to telephone numbers. Prior to cell phones, when everyone had landline numbers, your phone number was tied to your location. If you shifted houses/ locations you got a new phone number. In contrast, with cell phones numbers it doesn’t matter where you are as the number is linked to you, not your location. Similarly with VXLAN your VM IP address is linked to the VM, not its location.
Update:
- Found a good whitepaper by Arista on VXLANs. Something I hadn’t realized earlier was that the 24bit VXLAN Network Identifier is called VNI (this is what lets you have 16 millions VXLAN segments/ NSX Logical Switches) and that a VM’s MAC is combined with its VNI – thus allowing multiple VMs with the same MAC address to exist across the network (as long as they are on separate VXNETs).
- Also, while I am noting acronyms I might as well also mention VTEPs. These stand for Virtual Tunnel End Points. This is the “thing” that encapsulates/ decapsulates packets for VXLAN. This can be virtual bridges in the hypervisor (ESXi or any other); or even VXLAN aware VM applications or VXLAN capable switching hardware (wasn’t aware of this until I read the Arista whitepaper).
- VTEP communicates over UDP. The port number is 4789 (NSX 6.2.3 and later) or 8472 (pre-NSX 6.2.3).
- A post by Duncan Epping on VXLAN use cases. Probably dated in terms of the VXLAN issues it mentions (traffic tromboning) but I wanted to link it here as (a) it’s a good read and (b) it’s good to know such issues as that will help me better understand why things might be a certain way now (because they are designed to work around such issues).