SD-WAN Solution Overview
With Cisco SD-WAN Solution, it provide separation in each level like
- Separation in Orchestration
- Separation in Management Plane
- Separation in Control Plane
- Separation in Data Plane
With each layer it has specific functions like described below:
- The Orchestration layer or plane provides automatic onboarding of SD-WAN routers in SD-WAN enabled Overlay
- The Management plane helps in central configuration and monitoring of SD-WAN components and Overlay
- The Control Plane is helpful in building and maintaining network topology and based on control plane takes decision for all traffic flows
- The Data plane is responsible for forwarding data traffic based on decision taken from control plane
Below is the Overview diagram for Cisco Viptela Architecture solution plane:
Now let’s go in deep dive for each SD-WAN plane and its mapping components:
SD-WAN Components:
In Cisco Viptela Architecture solution, the following are the components used:
vBond (Orchestration plane )
- It is the Orchestrates control and management plane that is vSmart and vEdge
- vBond is software based components provides first point or initial authentication (white-list model) to all vEdge devices
- vBond distributes list of vSmarts/ vManage to all vEdge routers
- vBond Facilitates NAT traversal also requires public IP Address [could sit behind 1:1 NAT]
- Highly resilient in nature
vManage ( Management Plane )
- Single pane of glass for Day0, Day1 and Day2 operations
- Multitenant with web scale
- Centralized provisioning to configure all Cisco SD-WAN Devices via Policies and Templates
- Troubleshooting and Monitoring all Cisco SD-WAN devices
- It hepls in Software upgrades
- GUI with RBAC
- Programmatic interfaces (REST, NETCONF)
- Highly resilient
vSmart ( Control Plane )
- Facilitates fabric discovery and establish secure connection to each vEdge routers
- Dissimilates control plane information between vEdges via OMP
- Distributes data plane and app-aware routing policies to the vEdge routers
- Implements control plane policies, such as service chaining, multi-topology and multi-hop
- Dramatically reduces control plane complexity
- Highly resilient
vEdge ( data Plane )
- WAN edge router
- Provides secure data plane with remote vEdge routers
- Establishes secure control plane with vSmart controllers (OMP)
- Implements data plane and application aware routing policies
- Exports performance statistics
- Leverages traditional routing protocols like OSPF, BGP and VRRP
- Support Zero Touch Deployment
- Physical or Virtual form factor (100Mb, 1Gb, 10Gb)
