VXFLD: VXLAN BUM Flooding Suite

VXFLD is a suite of tools that provides the ability to do VXLAN broadcast, unknown unicast, and multicast (BUM) flooding using unicast instead of the traditional multicast. This is accomplished using 2 components, the service node daemon (vxsnd) and the registration daemon (vxrd).

It supports the following modes of operation:

Head-End replication

In this mode, the node at the head-end of the VXLAN tunnel makes copies of packets for each possible IP address at which the destination MAC address can be found. These packets are then unicast to all VXLAN tunnel endpoints (VTEPs) within the VXLAN segment. In addition to performing its registration function, vxrd programs the bridge table with IP addresses of remote VTEPs in the VXLAN segment, while vxsnd provides VTEP learning capabilities to the registration daemons.

To enable head-end replication:

1. Set head_rep to True in vxrd's configuration file.
2. Clear the remote address for the VXLAN interface.

Service Node Replication

Use this mode to replicate VXLAN BUM packets at the service node when you exceed the maximum VTEPs per VXLAN segment supported by the VXLAN driver. vxsnd provides the unicast BUM packet flooding and VTEP learning capabilities, and vxrd is responsible for registering local VTEPs with the service node.

To enable service node replication:

1. Disable head end replication by setting head_rep to False in vxrd's configuration file.
2. Set the remote address for the VXLAN interface to the service node's IP address (svcnode_ip in vxsnd's configuration file).
3. Set enable_vxlan_listen to True in vxsnd's configuration file to forward VXLAN data traffic on the service node.

Installation

Install using pip:

pip install git+https://github.com/CumulusNetworks/vxfld.git

or install from source:

python setup.py install

Building and installing man pages

Build the man pages:

python setup.py build_sphinx

Once built, the man pages can be found under build/man/. To install them:

mkdir /usr/local/man/man8
install -g 0 -o 0 -m 0644 build/man/vx*.8  /usr/local/man/man8/
gzip /usr/local/man/man8/vx*.8

Getting started

Registration node

Refer to the Configuring the Registration Node section in the LNV user guide. Launch the daemon by running:

sudo /path/to/vxrd -d

or to run as non-sudo:

/path/to/vxrd -d -p /path/to/vxrd.pid -u /path/to/vxrd.sock [ -c /path/to/vxrd.conf ]

Service node

Refer to the Configuring the Service Node section in the LNV user guide. Launch the daemon by running:

sudo /path/to/vxsnd -d

or to run as non-sudo:

/path/to/vxsnd -d -p /path/to/vxsnd.pid -u /path/to/vxsnd.sock --no-flood [ -c /path/to/vxsnd.conf ]

Note: software replication requires root priveleges to bind to raw sockets; --no-flood disables it.

Documentation

Cumulus Networks LNV user guide.