IS VXLAN Required for Vshield Edge etc?

[beaven67]

I was reading through some documentation and noticed it stating that you need to configure vxlan.

We don't use any Cisco switching so my question is simple. Is VXlan (cisco switching) require for vshield, vcloud Networking and Security?

Let me know any options that exist!

Thanks,

[showard1]

Hi,

VXLAN is not a Cisco specific thing, in fact, the basic premise is that its vendor-neutral.  As long as you can do IP routing between your vSphere hosts, VXLAN will work.  The hosts could all be on different VLANs, there could be 5 different switch and router vendors involved, all it needs is IP routing.  In the vCNS version of VXLAN, the only thing you need to do to the physical switch fabric to make this work is to bump up the MTU to at least 1600 (most people just do Jumbo Frames), and make sure multicast isn't getting squelched.  In the NSX version of VXLAN, you don't even need to worry about multicast.

All that said, you do not necessarily need to use VXLAN to use features of vCNS such as the Edge gateway and App Firewall.  You could just use regular old port groups backed by VLANs. 

[beaven67]

Thank you, I thought it wasn't a requirement but one of your vm guys kept telling me otherwise. We use Brocade and they dont have a VXlan fully baked yet!

Thanks for the info.

[showard1]

What they must be referring to is the ability to have the gateway for a VXLAN live on a hardware router.  That does require the hardware vendor to support a VXLAN VTEP.  That said, most of the people I work with just use the vCNS Edge Gateway.  Because it is a virtual construct, it eliminates the need for the physical routers/switches to have any involvement with the VXLANs (other than forwarding the IP traffic).

[sorabhk5]

Short answer is NO. <VXLAN is not a requirement for Edge>
Sean has already given the detailed reply.