Cisco's SD-WAN architecture is built on four planes of operation.
We'll first learn about networking. We're typically introduced to the control
and data plane,
and that has expanded over time, and with SD-WAN, we're actually going to find
we have four of these.
And yes, it does start with the data plane and the control plane.
But from there, we're going to find that we have a management plane.
And here's what's interesting. We have also an orchestration plane. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
This is perhaps the unique element of SD-WAN as it relates to our local area
networks,
because data control and management plane operations are pretty commonly cited.
So what is orchestration? And for that matter, how does the SD-WAN architecture
fit into all of these different planes?
And what we're going to find is we have a single device that maps into each one
of these planes.
So we have a device at the data plane, a device at the control plane, a device WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So we have a device at the data plane, a device at the control plane, a device
at the management plane,
and a device at the orchestration plane.
And so what we want to do here is go through the different devices as it
relates to the individual plane of operation.
So let's go ahead and start with the data plane.
And at the data plane, the device in question is going to be known as a WAN
edge.
Now this device has seen a bunch of name changes over time.
And a little bit is, this is a history lesson, because Cisco originally tried
to develop their own software defined wide area networking solution. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
to develop their own software defined wide area networking solution.
They called it iWAN, an intelligent WAN.
And it was essentially built on all of the traditional networking mechanisms,
but it didn't really deliver on what you expect out of a software defined
solution.
We didn't have a controller that really did a lot of things for us in a very
intuitive way.
And so Cisco eventually recognized, "Okay, maybe we didn't build this correctly
.
We should go out and we should find a solution that was built correctly and
made that our own." WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
made that our own."
Which is something that not only Cisco does, but plenty of other technology
companies do.
And so they acquired a company called Viptela.
And this Viptela, because it starts with a V, they named a lot of their devices
starting with a V.
And so when they acquired Viptela, Viptela had a hardware solution that was
their version of a WAN router.
Because a wide area network is typically built on routers, not layer three
switches.
There's a lot of reasons for that. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
There's a lot of reasons for that.
But the main reason is because, well, there's a few key reasons. First of all,
WAN types might require T1 cards.
Well, switches can't do T1. They can only do Ethernet.
And there's lots of other different types of WAN circuits that only routers can
support.
The other aspect is quality of service matters greatly.
And other software-driven components.
And so that's why a software-driven platform, like a router, is usually the
correct way to go
versus a hardware-driven platform, like a switch. So a little bit of background WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
versus a hardware-driven platform, like a switch. So a little bit of background
information in all of this.
But ultimately, what I'm driving at here is that this WAN edge device used to
be referred to as a V edge.
That little V in front doesn't stand for virtual.
Sometimes we see that in the IT world.
Instead, it actually is a reference to Viptela themselves.
So when Cisco acquired Viptela, they had a hardware solution known as a V edge.
Now, as you can imagine, Cisco being a company that literally started by WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Now, as you can imagine, Cisco being a company that literally started by
building routers probably didn't want to rely on V edges for very long.
Because they wanted to probably develop their own version of a WAN edge router.
And so they took their ISRs and they turned them into what they called C edges.
As part of this architecture, where the little C there stands for Cisco.
Well, at this point in the architecture, Cisco has done away with the V edge
and the C edge nomenclature.
And instead, we just refer to these as WAN edge devices. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And instead, we just refer to these as WAN edge devices.
So what exactly is a WAN edge device?
Well, believe it or not, it's still either an ISR and integrated services
router or likely in the modern network a catalyst 8000.
If you look at Cisco's line of routers, this catalyst 8000 series pops up.
And I always find it funny.
Cisco doesn't call the catalyst 8000 a router.
If you go on look at their website, they call it an edge platform.
Because, well, I can't say because why. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Because, well, I can't say because why.
I'm not on the Cisco marketing team.
But it is kind of interesting.
And so, especially when we look at this series of what I will call routers
because it really is their function.
And we refer to this as an edge platform.
Well, this word edge is seen up here.
And for that matter, down in the old names as well.
We're calling it an edge because it sits at the edge of our network and it
interfaces with the wide area network.
So what we can expect here is I'm going to have my router. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And that router is going to connect to probably some kind of layer 3 switch at
a site.
This might be a large site.
So this could be a distribution switch. This could be a very small site.
So it could be a completely collapsed type of device.
And it's going to connect into my edge device.
And in the SD-WAN world, this would be a WAN edge.
And then from here, we're expecting to communicate out and connect two
different circuits.
And yeah, this could be a T1 or something along those lines, a T1 E1. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And yeah, this could be a T1 or something along those lines, a T1 E1.
But in the modern network, we're expecting to probably see a little bit more MP
LS here.
Potentially some VPNs over the internet.
And part of the value of SD-WAN is we can get the same experience regardless of
what these circuit types are.
It doesn't matter if it's two internet circuits or two MPLS or whatever it is
that we have.
We could truly have T1s and E1s in here.
And the SD-WAN experience remains the same.
Of note at this point, we're going to introduce a little bit of terminology. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
We divide this router, as I just did in the diagram.
We're going to find that we have a transport side,
referring to WAN, or WAN circuits, as transports.
And then we're going to have the service side over here on the left.
As in, this is the network or these are the networks that we are servicing.
So this would be the local area network side.
This would be the wide area network side.
There's a little bit of a tidbit there. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
There's a little bit of a tidbit there.
And as we've said, the WAN edge device is responsible for forming IPsec tunnels
that are going to go out these different circuits.
So they're going to be capable of creating these IPsec tunnels to create our
overlay.
So that is the data plane.
And at this point, we're going to be focusing in on the device that is known as
the WAN edge,
being the representative for that plane of operation.
But as you can imagine, for this device to be operating, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
it's going to need a lot of help.
It's got to receive information, it's got to receive routing information,
management information, configuration information, for that matter.
It just needs to get onboarded.
And that is the responsibility of the rest of these four planes is to help the
WAN edge device
to be able to perform and do what it needs to do,
and ultimately take our service traffic and send it out into the transport side
of things.
So as we go through these, we can start with the control plane WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So as we go through these, we can start with the control plane
and the device responsible for helping us with the control plane is known as
the V-Smart.
And yes, for the rest of these, we are going to see that Cisco has yet to reb
rand that little V.
So nice little nod to the VipTella acquisition here.
But just keep that in mind for all I know, Cisco is going to rebrand these.
At some point, just like they did with the V-Edges and the C-Edges.
But for now, they're still calling it the V-Smart.
So what is it responsible for? WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Well, it's responsible for control plane operations.
And when we think about control plane operations,
a lot of times what we're going to see thinking about is some form of route
distribution.
And not just route distribution, but potentially policy distribution as well.
In other words, as far as the WAN Edge device is making decisions about what
traffic to send out,
which one of these links, that's going to have to be dictated at the control
plane WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
and the V-Smart is responsible for it.
The V-Smart is going to be a device that sits out on the network.
And then we build out our SD-WAN.
So we've got a bunch of Edge devices out here.
We've got a bunch of IP-Sect tunnels, potentially full mesh, potentially not.
And this V-Smart over here is going to be responsible for not only receiving
information
from all of these different devices, all of these WAN edges,
but then we're going to push our control plane information back down. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
but then we're going to push our control plane information back down.
And one of the key facets to this is going to be a protocol known as the Over
lay Management Protocol or OMP.
OMP is going to be a brand new protocol for most of us,
anyone who really hasn't studied SD-WAN because this is a protocol that was
developed just for this.
And we'll find if we were to drill into the details of OMP, which is beyond the WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And we'll find if we were to drill into the details of OMP, which is beyond the
scope of this course,
but when we're taking a look at what exactly it is, it's very BGP-like.
It operates very similarly to BGP.
It's going to receive information again about networks.
So it's aware of what's out there.
It's going to make routing decisions, but the routing decisions and what routes
to install,
those decisions are not made by the WAN edge device itself or themselves.
It's going to be a responsibility of the V-Smart. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
It's going to be a responsibility of the V-Smart.
So that is the control plane.
Now next up, we have these two other planes to talk about.
And we'll go to the, I guess we'll say the management plane here, management.
And this one's pretty straightforward.
It's going to be called the V-manage.
The name is right there in the, as far as relating back the device to the plane
of operation.
So the V-manage is responsible for all of our admin management. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So the V-manage is responsible for all of our admin management.
So we are going to be very familiar with the V-manage because this is going to
be a device that also sits out here
and has, you know, sends information around and receives information, all of
these things.
But ultimately, you and me as the admins of the SD-WAN environment,
we're going to log into V-manage and define all of the policies that we desire.
We also have the ability to perform API configuration this way. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
We also have the ability to perform API configuration this way.
So we could use restful APIs in order to send the information to V-manage that
way.
That allows for programmatic access.
And then V-manage on the other side of things is going to use NetConf.
Here, it's going to use NetConf to push that information out to the other
devices, especially the V-Smarts and the,
well, I was going to say the V-Edges, but the edges themselves, as well as the
last device.
Now this runs as a virtual machine, so funny enough, V-M, which stood for V-man WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Now this runs as a virtual machine, so funny enough, V-M, which stood for V-man
age a moment ago, is,
I'm not going to write V-M here as a virtual machine, but we're probably going
to run this either in a cloud environment or in our hypervisor of choice that's
running inside of our own data center.
Now lastly, but not least, they've come to the probably the more interesting
one of the bunch, which is this orchestration plane.
And at the orchestration plane, we have a device known as the V-Bond.
The name V-Bond is very intentionally chosen. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
We've got a lot of relationships in here, and among all of these devices that
are all trying to communicate with one another.
And how do we glue those connections together? How do we bond them together?
Well, that is the responsibility of the orchestration plane, and specifically
of the V-Bond device.
It is responsible primarily for the onboarding of our devices.
Which is kind of interesting, because what we find is that the V-Bond is going WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Which is kind of interesting, because what we find is that the V-Bond is going
to sit out here, usually in a public cloud space.
And the reason for that is because it must have a public IP address.
It needs a public IP address because a lot of our WAN devices might be hidden
behind NAT.
And in order to help these two routers to form a relationship with one another,
depending on the situation, we might need to perform NAT traversal.
And NAT traversal is going to require a device that both of these devices can WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And NAT traversal is going to require a device that both of these devices can
reach, which ideally is anything with a public IP address.
And so the V-Bond is going to allow devices to come online and reach out and
find the V-Bond. The V-Bond will then connect all of these other devices
together to say, "Okay, as this WAN edge device comes online, here's your V-S
mart, here's your V-Manage.
And from there we can continue to connect all of the devices together. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And from there we can continue to connect all of the devices together.
And so it's going to send a list as part of that process. It's going to send a
list of all the V-Manage and the V-Smart IP addresses to the WAN edge device.
And again, usually we're going to find that the public cloud is a good place to
run the V-Bond, although we can run it in-house if we want to, as long as we
have it set up with the public IP address.
So as we zoom out and look at all of these devices, what we're going to find is
that we're going to have many of our WAN edge devices out there. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
that we're going to have many of our WAN edge devices out there.
We're going to have usually a primary or like an active and a standby V-Manage
in case it goes down. Again, it's operating in a virtual machine.
So we'll just have a spare running there. We'll do something similar with the V
-Bond. But with the V-Smarts, we're going to find that we probably are going to
run a lot of V-Smarts.
Typically we're going to want to scale out by having lots of these and
depending on where they live, how many we want to do, maybe on a per circuit WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
depending on where they live, how many we want to do, maybe on a per circuit
basis, that kind of situation.
And that's all part of SD-WAN architecture and design. But understand that this
isn't just a single V-Smart out there. In the same way it's not a single V-Edge
out there.
We've got a lot of devices that are going to come together and it all starts
with understanding the four different planes of operation, as well as the
devices that operate within that plane.
playing.