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Dell SmartFabric OS10 User Guide Release 10.5.3

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MAC mobility

In a typical Data Center environment, VM's hosted in one server attached to a VTEP, can be moved to a different server attached to another VTEP, to facilitate the Workload mobility. This situation creates a unique problem of the same VM MAC being advertised by two VTEPs till the MAC entry is aged out from the VTEP, which is initially advertised. It also leads to traffic block-holing for a brief period of time. EVPN provides a mechanism to avoid this problem, by attaching a sequence number for each MAC advertised by a VTEP in the EVPN control plane. This sequence number is part of MAC mobility extended community, that is attached to each MAC advertisement.

When a VTEP learns a new MAC address from its attached hosts or servers and if that MAC address was previously advertised by another VTEP, it includes the MAC mobility extended community with an incremented sequence number in the MAC advertisement. After receiving this advertisement, the VTEP, which advertised the old MAC route, will initiate the MAC withdrawal, thus eliminating the traffic block-holing.

In this topology diagram, NVE-1, NVE-2, and NVE-3 are peering with the Spine switch. VTEP-1 learns the MAC and IP addresses of the connected Host H1, when H1 either sends an ARP request for remote Host or Gratuitous ARP. VTEP-1 also learns about Host1 being part of VNI-1 as it is connected by Port P1, VLAN V1. (P1,V1) is configured to be part of the bridge domain VNI-1. VTEP-1 advertises this information about H1 to all the remote VTEPs using MP-BGP EVPN control plane.

The following table captures the static MAC events and the Dell SmartFabric OS10 behavior:

Table 1. Static MAC events and SmartFabric OS10 behavior
Static MAC event SmartFabric OS10 behavior
Static local MAC configured on a Virtual-network
  • Virtual-network populates the static MAC in the local FDB.
  • Virtual-network publishes the MAC to EVPN control plane.
Received a Static MAC from the Remote NVE
  • EVPN control plane adds the static MAC to the virtual-network.
  • Virtual-network programs the MAC as static in its FDB.

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