Cisco ACI Multi-Pod Control Plane Scaling: IPN Configuration for Efficient BUM Traffic Forwarding

Configuring IPN for Efficient BUM Traffic Forwarding in Cisco ACI Multi-Pod

Question

An organization expands a Cisco ACI Multi-Pod from two to six pods and must ensure that the control plane scales.

What should be configured in the IPN to ensure that BUM traffic is forwarded efficiently across the IPN?

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Explanations

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https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/application-centric-infrastructure/white-paper-c11-737855.html

When expanding a Cisco ACI Multi-Pod from two to six pods, it is important to ensure that the control plane scales. One of the key considerations when scaling the control plane is how to efficiently forward Broadcast, Unknown unicast, and Multicast (BUM) traffic across the Inter-Pod Network (IPN).

To ensure that BUM traffic is forwarded efficiently across the IPN, one possible solution is to configure spine headend replication. With this configuration, when a spine receives BUM traffic destined for a remote pod, it replicates the traffic to all other spines in the same pod. Each receiving spine then replicates the traffic to all leaf switches connected to it in the remote pod. This way, BUM traffic is efficiently forwarded across the IPN without having to flood the entire network.

However, spine headend replication can be resource-intensive and may not scale well in large multi-pod environments. An alternative solution is to use Multicast Protocol BGP (MP-BGP) to efficiently forward BUM traffic across the IPN. MP-BGP is a scalable routing protocol that is designed for use in large networks, such as data centers, and can be used to distribute MAC and IP information between pods in a multi-pod environment.

Another possible solution is to use Bi-Directional PIM (BIDIR-PIM), which is another multicast routing protocol that is designed to efficiently forward BUM traffic across large networks. BIDIR-PIM uses a shared tree approach to route multicast traffic, which can be more efficient than other multicast routing protocols in some situations.

Finally, the use of Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) can also be an option in some scenarios. MSDP is a protocol that is used to distribute information about multicast sources across multiple autonomous systems or domains. MSDP can be used to forward BUM traffic across the IPN by allowing multicast traffic to be sourced from multiple locations and then forwarding it to all receivers in the network.

In summary, to ensure that BUM traffic is efficiently forwarded across the IPN when expanding a Cisco ACI Multi-Pod from two to six pods, one of the following configurations should be considered: spine headend replication, MP-BGP, BIDIR-PIM, or MSDP. The optimal solution will depend on the specific requirements of the network and the available resources.