INTEGRATOR · DELL + NEXUS

An EVPN fabric with Dell and Nexus leaves

A Nexus leaf joins the Dell fabric of the previous lab. The two Dell leaves already share VNI 10010. Nexus does not match automatic route-targets on the VNI, so write one route-target on all three leaves. L3’s underlay is up.

Integrator track · Dell OS10-style, Dell SONiC-style, Cisco Nexus · 5 objectives

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Objectives

The simulator ticks each one as soon as the network meets it.

On L3, enable nv overlay and evpn, map VLAN 10 to vn-segment 10010, and build nve1 with source-interface loopback1, host-reachability protocol bgp, and member vni 10010 with ingress-replication protocol bgp.
On L3’s neighbor 10.1.3.2, add address-family l2vpn evpn with send-community extended.
Under evpn on L3: vni 10010 l2, with rd auto and route-target both 65000:10010. The Dell leaves export automatic targets, so give them the same value too: on L2 (OS10) replace auto-evi with evi 10010, vni 10010, route-target 65000:10010 both.
show nve peers on L3: 10.10.10.2 is up.
Ping PC2 (192.168.10.20) from PC3.

Start this lab

Before you start

EVPN routes survive the Dell spine because BGP passes them on with their communities and next hop unchanged. Route-targets must match exactly when vendors differ. SONiC’s automatic import matches any route-target ending in its VNI, so L1 needs no change here, but L3 must import L1’s target to reach PC1: in production, set one on every leaf.

Concept

BGP EVPN: a control plane for VXLAN

BGP EVPN replaces flood-and-learn with BGP routes in the L2VPN EVPN address family. Each VTEP advertises an inclusive-multicast route (type 3) per VNI, so the others know to replicate to it, and a MAC route (type 2) per local host, so remote MACs are known before any traffic flows. A spine is usually the iBGP route reflector.

Concept

A leaf-spine fabric on Dell switches

Every leaf connects to every spine, and no leaf connects to another leaf, so any two leaves are two hops apart over several equal paths. eBGP routes between loopbacks form the underlay, usually with one ASN per leaf pair. EVPN then runs on the same BGP sessions: VTEPs announce their VNIs and hosts, and tunnels form from those routes. SONiC can peer without link addresses: ipv6 enable and neighbor interface are enough.