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)