Virtual Switch Instance – vMX
Feb 18
Juniper jncie, juniper, virtual-switch 6 Comments
Hi,
Virtual-Switch instance was alwaysΒ a fascination for me, just for a simple fact that you could turn a Router to Bridge/Switch everything. Although there are many advantages and applications, I quickly wanted to write up the Lab scenario which I have Done. I always prefer seeing some simple things first and then may be do a deep-dive about the feature.
Requirement- Router-1 / 2/ 3 are all attached to VMX , they have to ping to each other through vMX and this has to happen via Instance Virtual-Switch. Now, someone who already knows about default-switch / Bridge-domain could have said why not use these, well this Post is going to Expand when we revisit of having Why we needed Virtual-Switch advantage in first place.
Below is the Topology
Ge-0/0/0 is connected to R1 , Ge-0/0/1 connected to R2, Ge-0/0/3 Connected to R3. Let see what we need to configure at a basic level for this to work
So far so Good, whats Next, as per the requirement we were to create a Virtual-Switch Instance
Everything is fine, but looks like communication is not yet established, the reason is simple, we have used something called Enterprise-Style definition. To put it simply, we have to configure a Bridge-Domain for these interfaces to be associated with Bridge-Domain of Vlan-id 100. There is something called Learning Domain where it gets associated to Bridge-Domain, but that is not the post about.
Lets Create a Bridge-Domain quickly for Vlan-id 100 and see if it changes anything, please do note the bridge-domain will now be the part of the Instance and here comes the beauty of the virtual-switch, you could have completely a different virtual-switch with same Vlan and it just works fine, re-call the Idea of VRFΒ / Routing-Instance now π
Fantastic!
Lets look at the configuration again along with Mac-Table generation
Regards
Rakesh M
Feb 18, 2016 @ 17:21:35
seedi bath no bakhwas!
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Life As A Network Engineer – Rakesh wrote:
> Rakesh M posted: “Hi, Virtual-Switch instance was always a fascination > for me, just for a simple fact that you could turn a Router to > Bridge/Switch everything. Although there are many advantages and > applications, I quickly wanted to write up the Lab scenario which I ha” >
Feb 21, 2016 @ 20:03:25
Nice One,
Nuvvu naaku matram cheppaku Vmx installation gurunchi..
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Life As A Network Engineer – Rakesh wrote:
> Rakesh M posted: “Hi, Virtual-Switch instance was always a fascination > for me, just for a simple fact that you could turn a Router to > Bridge/Switch everything. Although there are many advantages and > applications, I quickly wanted to write up the Lab scenario which I ha” >
Oct 15, 2018 @ 23:51:26
Hi Rakesh. Seems to be what I am looking for. A simple layer 2 configuration for (v)MX. Question: Is R1, R2 and R3 receiving tagged traffic? I suppose not as you don’t mention it. π
Oct 16, 2018 @ 13:32:36
Hi Per, my general use case is always to enable tagging on end nodes as they will enable me to emulate many logical-systems. You can keep them as Access ports or Trunk, i think it should work fine. I have to tell you though, the same setup of vmx instances on ESXI instead of EVE-NG emulation was misbehaving with access-ports so i had to enable tagging for layer-3 communication. Let me know if you need help
Nov 28, 2018 @ 20:30:54
Hello Rakesh, I wanted to make a lab but not only using a single VLAN, I want to use many VLANs.
Nov 28, 2018 @ 22:03:36
Hi Fodd, The only way you can do that is via ESXI Bridged networking. Idea is that you need to have some sort of virtual-switch to do the switching , in this case it was VMX in other cases i have seen a hardware switch connected 4 port Lan card in PC or a Dell server
-Rakesh