Skip to main content

Problem Statement: Overlays for Network Virtualization
draft-ietf-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-00

The information below is for an old version of the document.
Document Type
This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7364.
Authors Dr. Thomas Narten , Dinesh Dutt , Luyuan Fang , Eric Gray , Larry Kreeger , Maria Napierala , Murari Sridharan
Last updated 2012-09-05
Replaces draft-narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement
RFC stream Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Formats
Additional resources Mailing list discussion
Stream WG state WG Document
Document shepherd (None)
IESG IESG state Became RFC 7364 (Informational)
Consensus boilerplate Unknown
Telechat date (None)
Responsible AD (None)
Send notices to (None)
draft-ietf-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-00
Internet Engineering Task Force                           T. Narten, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                       IBM
Intended status: Informational                                  D. Black
Expires: March 9, 2013                                               EMC
                                                                 D. Dutt

                                                                 L. Fang
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                            E. Gray, Ed.
                                                                Ericsson
                                                              L. Kreeger
                                                                   Cisco
                                                            M. Napierala
                                                                    AT&T
                                                            M. Sridharan
                                                               Microsoft
                                                       September 5, 2012

         Problem Statement: Overlays for Network Virtualization
              draft-ietf-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-00

Abstract

   This document describes issues associated with providing multi-
   tenancy in large data center networks that require an overlay-based
   network virtualization approach to addressing them.  A key multi-
   tenancy requirement is traffic isolation, so that a tenant's traffic
   is not visible to any other tenant.  This isolation can be achieved
   by assigning one or more virtual networks to each tenant such that
   traffic within a virtual network is isolated from traffic in other
   virtual networks.  The primary functionality required is provisioning
   virtual networks, associating a virtual machine's virtual network
   interface(s) with the appropriate virtual network, and maintaining
   that association as the virtual machine is activated, migrated and/or
   deactivated.  Use of an overlay-based approach enables scalable
   deployment on large network infrastructures.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 9, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Problem Areas  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.1.  Need For Dynamic Provisioning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
     2.2.  Virtual Machine Mobility Limitations . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     2.3.  Inadequate Forwarding Table Sizes in Switches  . . . . . .  6
     2.4.  Need to Decouple Logical and Physical Configuration  . . .  7
     2.5.  Need For Address Separation Between Tenants  . . . . . . .  7
     2.6.  Need For Address Separation Between Tenant and
           Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     2.7.  IEEE 802.1 VLAN Limitations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   3.  Network Overlays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.1.  Benefits of Network Overlays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     3.2.  Communication Between Virtual and Traditional Networks . . 10
     3.3.  Communication Between Virtual Networks . . . . . . . . . . 11
     3.4.  Overlay Design Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     3.5.  Overlay Networking Work Areas  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   4.  Related  IETF and IEEE Work  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.1.  L3 BGP/MPLS IP VPNs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.2.  L2 BGP/MPLS IP VPNs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     4.3.  IEEE 802.1aq - Shortest Path Bridging  . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.4.  ARMD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.5.  TRILL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     4.6.  L2VPNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     4.7.  Proxy Mobile IP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     4.8.  LISP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   5.  Further Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   6.  Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   7.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   8.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   9.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   Appendix A.  Change Log  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     A.1.  Changes from
           draft-narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-04.txt . . . . 19
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

1.  Introduction

   Data Centers are increasingly being consolidated and outsourced in an
   effort, both to improve the deployment time of applications as well
   as reduce operational costs.  This coincides with an increasing
   demand for compute, storage, and network resources from applications.
   In order to scale compute, storage, and network resources, physical
   resources are being abstracted from their logical representation, in
   what is referred to as server, storage, and network virtualization.
   Virtualization can be implemented in various layers of computer
   systems or networks

   The demand for server virtualization is increasing in data centers.
   With server virtualization, each physical server supports multiple
   virtual machines (VMs), each running its own operating system,
   middleware and applications.  Virtualization is a key enabler of
   workload agility, i.e., allowing any server to host any application
   and providing the flexibility of adding, shrinking, or moving
   services within the physical infrastructure.  Server virtualization
   provides numerous benefits, including higher utilization, increased
   security, reduced user downtime, reduced power usage, etc.

   Multi-tenant data centers are taking advantage of the benefits of
   server virtualization to provide a new kind of hosting, a virtual
   hosted data center.  Multi-tenant data centers are ones where
   individual tenants could belong to a different company (in the case
   of a public provider) or a different department (in the case of an
   internal company data center).  Each tenant has the expectation of a
   level of security and privacy separating their resources from those
   of other tenants.  For example, one tenant's traffic must never be
   exposed to another tenant, except through carefully controlled
   interfaces, such as a security gateway.

   To a tenant, virtual data centers are similar to their physical
   counterparts, consisting of end stations attached to a network,
   complete with services such as load balancers and firewalls.  But
   unlike a physical data center, end stations connect to a virtual
   network.  To end stations, a virtual network looks like a normal
   network (e.g., providing an ethernet or L3 service), except that the
   only end stations connected to the virtual network are those
   belonging to a tenant's specific virtual network.

   A tenant is the administrative entity that is responsible for and
   manages a specific virtual network instance and its associated
   services (whether virtual or physical).  In a cloud environment, a
   tenant would correspond to the customer that has defined and is using
   a particular virtual network.  However, a tenant may also find it
   useful to create multiple different virtual network instances.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   Hence, there is a one-to-many mapping between tenants and virtual
   network instances.  A single tenant may operate multiple individual
   virtual network instances, each associated with a different service.

   How a virtual network is implemented does not generally matter to the
   tenant; what matters is that the service provided (L2 or L3) has the
   right semantics, performance, etc.  It could be implemented via a
   pure routed network, a pure bridged network or a combination of
   bridged and routed networks.  A key requirement is that each
   individual virtual network instance be isolated from other virtual
   network instances.

   For data center virtualization, two key issues must be addressed.
   First, address space separation between tenants must be supported.
   Second, it must be possible to place (and migrate) VMs anywhere in
   the data center, without restricting VM addressing to match the
   subnet boundaries of the underlying data center network.

   This document outlines the problems encountered in scaling the number
   of isolated networks in a data center, as well as the problems of
   managing the creation/deletion, membership and span of these networks
   and makes the case that an overlay based approach, where individual
   networks are implemented within individual virtual networks that are
   dynamically controlled by a standardized control plane provides a
   number of advantages over current approaches.  The purpose of this
   document is to identify the set of problems that any solution has to
   address in building multi-tenant data centers.  With this approach,
   the goal is to allow the construction of standardized, interoperable
   implementations to allow the construction of multi-tenant data
   centers.

   Section 2 describes the problem space details.  Section 3 describes
   overlay networks in more detail.  Sections 4 and 5 review related and
   further work, while Section 6 closes with a summary.

2.  Problem Areas

   The following subsections describe aspects of multi-tenant data
   center networking that pose problems for network infrastructure.
   Different problem aspects may arise based on the network architecture
   and scale.

2.1.  Need For Dynamic Provisioning

   Cloud computing involves on-demand provisioning of resources for
   multi-tenant environments.  A common example of cloud computing is
   the public cloud, where a cloud service provider offers elastic

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   services to multiple customers over the same infrastructure.  In
   current systems, it can be difficult to provision resources for
   individual tenants in such a way that provisioned properties migrate
   automatically when services are dynamically moved around within the
   data center to optimize workloads.

2.2.  Virtual Machine Mobility Limitations

   A key benefit of server virtualization is virtual machine (VM)
   mobility.  A VM can be migrated from one server to another, live,
   i.e., while continuing to run and without needing to shut it down and
   restart it at the new location.  A key requirement for live migration
   is that a VM retain critical network state at its new location,
   including its IP and MAC address(es).  Preservation of MAC addresses
   may be necessary, for example, when software licenses are bound to
   MAC addresses.  More generally, any change in the VM's MAC addresses
   resulting from a move would be visible to the VM and thus potentially
   result in unexpected disruptions.  Retaining IP addresses after a
   move is necessary to prevent existing transport connections (e.g.,
   TCP) from breaking and needing to be restarted.

   In traditional data centers, servers are assigned IP addresses based
   on their physical location, for example based on the Top of Rack
   (ToR) switch for the server rack or the VLAN configured to the
   server.  Servers can only move to other locations within the same IP
   subnet.  This constraint is not problematic for physical servers,
   which move infrequently, but it restricts the placement and movement
   of VMs within the data center.  Any solution for a scalable multi-
   tenant data center must allow a VM to be placed (or moved) anywhere
   within the data center, without being constrained by the subnet
   boundary concerns of the host servers.

2.3.  Inadequate Forwarding Table Sizes in Switches

   Today's virtualized environments place additional demands on the
   forwarding tables of switches in the physical infrastructure.
   Instead of just one link-layer address per server, the switching
   infrastructure has to learn addresses of the individual VMs (which
   could range in the 100s per server).  This is a requirement since
   traffic from/to the VMs to the rest of the physical network will
   traverse the physical network infrastructure.  This places a much
   larger demand on the switches' forwarding table capacity compared to
   non-virtualized environments, causing more traffic to be flooded or
   dropped when the number of addresses in use exceeds a switch's
   forwarding table capacity.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

2.4.  Need to Decouple Logical and Physical Configuration

   Data center operators must be able to achieve high utilization of
   server and network capacity.  For efficient and flexible allocation,
   operators should be able to spread a virtual network instance across
   servers in any rack in the data center.  It should also be possible
   to migrate compute workloads to any server anywhere in the network
   while retaining the workload's addresses.  In networks using VLANs,
   moving servers elsewhere in the network may require expanding the
   scope of the VLAN beyond its original boundaries.  While this can be
   done, it requires potentially complex network configuration changes
   and can conflict with the desire to bound the size of broadcast
   domains, especially in larger data centers.

   However, in order to limit the broadcast domain of each VLAN, multi-
   destination frames within a VLAN should optimally flow only to those
   devices that have that VLAN configured.  When workloads migrate, the
   physical network (e.g., access lists) may need to be reconfigured
   which is typically time consuming and error prone.

   An important use case is cross-pod expansion.  A pod typically
   consists of one or more racks of servers with its associated network
   and storage connectivity.  A tenant's virtual network may start off
   on a pod and, due to expansion, require servers/VMs on other pods,
   especially the case when other pods are not fully utilizing all their
   resources.  This use case requires that virtual networks span
   multiple pods in order to provide connectivity to all of its tenant's
   servers/VMs.  Such expansion can be difficult to achieve when tenant
   addressing is tied to the addressing used by the underlay network or
   when it requires that the scope of the underlying L2 VLAN expand
   beyond its original pod boundary.

2.5.  Need For Address Separation Between Tenants

   Individual tenants need control over the addresses they use within a
   virtual network.  But it can be problematic when different tenants
   want to use the same addresses, or even if the same tenant wants to
   reuse the same addresses in different virtual networks.
   Consequently, virtual networks must allow tenants to use whatever
   addresses they want without concern for what addresses are being used
   by other tenants or other virtual networks.

2.6.  Need For Address Separation Between Tenant and Infrastructure

   As in the previous case, a tenant needs to be able to use whatever
   addresses it wants in a virtual network independent of what addresses
   the underlying data center network is using.  Tenants (and the
   underlay infrastructure provider) should be able use whatever

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   addresses make sense for them, without having to worry about address
   collisions between addresses used by tenants and those used by the
   underlay data center network.

2.7.  IEEE 802.1 VLAN Limitations

   VLANs are a well known construct in the networking industry,
   providing an L2 service via an L2 underlay.  A VLAN is an L2 bridging
   construct that provides some of the semantics of virtual networks
   mentioned above: a MAC address is unique within a VLAN, but not
   necessarily across VLANs.  Traffic sourced within a VLAN (including
   broadcast and multicast traffic) remains within the VLAN it
   originates from.  Traffic forwarded from one VLAN to another
   typically involves router (L3) processing.  The forwarding table look
   up operation is keyed on {VLAN, MAC address} tuples.

   But there are problems and limitations with L2 VLANs.  VLANs are a
   pure L2 bridging construct and VLAN identifiers are carried along
   with data frames to allow each forwarding point to know what VLAN the
   frame belongs to.  A VLAN today is defined as a 12 bit number,
   limiting the total number of VLANs to 4096 (though typically, this
   number is 4094 since 0 and 4095 are reserved).  Due to the large
   number of tenants that a cloud provider might service, the 4094 VLAN
   limit is often inadequate.  In addition, there is often a need for
   multiple VLANs per tenant, which exacerbates the issue.  The use of a
   sufficiently large VNID, present in the overlay control plane and
   possibly also in the dataplane would eliminate current VLAN size
   limitations associated with single 12-bit VLAN tags.

3.  Network Overlays

   Virtual Networks are used to isolate a tenant's traffic from that of
   other tenants (or even traffic within the same tenant that requires
   isolation).  There are two main characteristics of virtual networks:

   1.  Virtual networks isolate the address space used in one virtual
       network from the address space used by another virtual network.
       The same network addresses may be used in different virtual
       networks at the same time.  In addition, the address space used
       by a virtual network is independent from that used by the
       underlying physical network.

   2.  Virtual Networks limit the scope of packets sent on the virtual
       network.  Packets sent by end systems attached to a virtual
       network are delivered as expected to other end systems on that
       virtual network and may exit a virtual network only through
       controlled exit points such as a security gateway.  Likewise,

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

       packets sourced from outside of the virtual network may enter the
       virtual network only through controlled entry points, such as a
       security gateway.

3.1.  Benefits of Network Overlays

   To address the problems described in Section 2, a network overlay
   model can be used.

   The idea behind an overlay is quite straightforward.  Each virtual
   network instance is implemented as an overlay.  The original packet
   is encapsulated by the first-hop network device.  The encapsulation
   identifies the destination of the device that will perform the
   decapsulation before delivering the original packet to the endpoint.
   The rest of the network forwards the packet based on the
   encapsulation header and can be oblivious to the payload that is
   carried inside.

   Overlays are based on what is commonly known as a "map-and-encap"
   architecture.  There are three distinct and logically separable
   steps:

   1.  The first-hop overlay device implements a mapping operation that
       determines where the encapsulated packet should be sent to reach
       its intended destination VM.  Specifically, the mapping function
       maps the destination address (either L2 or L3) of a packet
       received from a VM into the corresponding destination address of
       the egress device.  The destination address will be the underlay
       address of the device doing the decapsulation and is an IP
       address.

   2.  Once the mapping has been determined, the ingress overlay device
       encapsulates the received packet within an overlay header.

   3.  The final step is to actually forward the (now encapsulated)
       packet to its destination.  The packet is forwarded by the
       underlay (i.e., the IP network) based entirely on its outer
       address.  Upon receipt at the destination, the egress overlay
       device decapsulates the original packet and delivers it to the
       intended recipient VM.

   Each of the above steps is logically distinct, though an
   implementation might combine them for efficiency or other reasons.
   It should be noted that in L3 BGP/VPN terminology, the above steps
   are commonly known as "forwarding" or "virtual forwarding".

   The first hop network device can be a traditional switch or router or
   the virtual switch residing inside a hypervisor.  Furthermore, the

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   endpoint can be a VM or it can be a physical server.  Examples of
   architectures based on network overlays include BGP/MPLS VPNs
   [RFC4364], TRILL [RFC6325], LISP [I-D.ietf-lisp], and Shortest Path
   Bridging (SPB-M) [SPBM].

   In the data plane, a virtual network identifier (or VNID), or a
   locally significant identifier, can be carried as part of the overlay
   header so that every data packet explicitly identifies the specific
   virtual network the packet belongs to.  Since both routed and bridged
   semantics can be supported by a virtual data center, the original
   packet carried within the overlay header can be an Ethernet frame
   complete with MAC addresses or just the IP packet.

   The use of a sufficiently large VNID would address current VLAN
   limitations associated with single 12-bit VLAN tags.  This VNID can
   be carried in the control plane.  In the data plane, an overlay
   header provides a place to carry either the VNID, or an identifier
   that is locally-significant to the edge device.  In both cases, the
   identifier in the overlay header specifies which virtual network the
   data packet belongs to.

   A key aspect of overlays is the decoupling of the "virtual" MAC
   and/or IP addresses used by VMs from the physical network
   infrastructure and the infrastructure IP addresses used by the data
   center.  If a VM changes location, the overlay edge devices simply
   update their mapping tables to reflect the new location of the VM
   within the data center's infrastructure space.  Because an overlay
   network is used, a VM can now be located anywhere in the data center
   that the overlay reaches without regards to traditional constraints
   implied by L2 properties such as VLAN numbering, or the span of an L2
   broadcast domain scoped to a single pod or access switch.

   Multi-tenancy is supported by isolating the traffic of one virtual
   network instance from traffic of another.  Traffic from one virtual
   network instance cannot be delivered to another instance without
   (conceptually) exiting the instance and entering the other instance
   via an entity that has connectivity to both virtual network
   instances.  Without the existence of this entity, tenant traffic
   remains isolated within each individual virtual network instance.

   Overlays are designed to allow a set of VMs to be placed within a
   single virtual network instance, whether that virtual network
   provides a bridged network or a routed network.

3.2.  Communication Between Virtual and Traditional Networks

   Not all communication will be between devices connected to
   virtualized networks.  Devices using overlays will continue to access

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 10]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   devices and make use of services on traditional, non-virtualized
   networks, whether in the data center, the public Internet, or at
   remote/branch campuses.  Any virtual network solution must be capable
   of interoperating with existing routers, VPN services, load
   balancers, intrusion detection services, firewalls, etc. on external
   networks.

   Communication between devices attached to a virtual network and
   devices connected to non-virtualized networks is handled
   architecturally by having specialized gateway devices that receive
   packets from a virtualized network, decapsulate them, process them as
   regular (i.e., non-virtualized) traffic, and finally forward them on
   to their appropriate destination (and vice versa).  Additional
   identification, such as VLAN tags, could be used on the non-
   virtualized side of such a gateway to enable forwarding of traffic
   for multiple virtual networks over a common non-virtualized link.

   A wide range of implementation approaches are possible.  Overlay
   gateway functionality could be combined with other network
   functionality into a network device that implements the overlay
   functionality, and then forwards traffic between other internal
   components that implement functionality such as full router service,
   load balancing, firewall support, VPN gateway, etc.

3.3.  Communication Between Virtual Networks

   Communication between devices on different virtual networks is
   handled architecturally by adding specialized interconnect
   functionality among the otherwise isolated virtual networks.  For a
   virtual network providing an L2 service, such interconnect
   functionality could be IP forwarding configured as part of the
   "default gateway" for each virtual network.  For a virtual network
   providing L3 service, the interconnect functionality could be IP
   forwarding configured as part of routing between IP subnets or it can
   be based on configured inter-virtual network traffic policies.  In
   both cases, the implementation of the interconnect functionality
   could be distributed across the NVEs, and could be combined with
   other network functionality (e.g., load balancing, firewall support)
   that is applied to traffic that is forwarded between virtual
   networks.

3.4.  Overlay Design Characteristics

   There are existing layer 2 and layer 3 overlay protocols in
   existence, but they do not necessarily solve all of today's problem
   in the environment of a highly virtualized data center.  Below are
   some of the characteristics of environments that must be taken into
   account by the overlay technology:

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 11]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   1.  Highly distributed systems.  The overlay should work in an
       environment where there could be many thousands of access devices
       (e.g. residing within the hypervisors) and many more end systems
       (e.g.  VMs) connected to them.  This leads to a distributed
       mapping system that puts a low overhead on the overlay tunnel
       endpoints.

   2.  Many highly distributed virtual networks with sparse membership.
       Each virtual network could be highly dispersed inside the data
       center.  Also, along with expectation of many virtual networks,
       the number of end systems connected to any one virtual network is
       expected to be relatively low; Therefore, the percentage of
       access devices participating in any given virtual network would
       also be expected to be low.  For this reason, efficient delivery
       of multi-destination traffic within a virtual network instance
       should be taken into consideration.

   3.  Highly dynamic end systems.  End systems connected to virtual
       networks can be very dynamic, both in terms of creation/deletion/
       power-on/off and in terms of mobility across the access devices.

   4.  Work with existing, widely deployed network Ethernet switches and
       IP routers without requiring wholesale replacement.  The first
       hop device (or end system) that adds and removes the overlay
       header will require new equipment and/or new software.

   5.  Work with existing data center network deployments without
       requiring major changes in operational or other practices.  For
       example, some data centers have not enabled multicast beyond
       link-local scope.  Overlays should be capable of leveraging
       underlay multicast support where appropriate, but not require its
       enablement in order to use an overlay solution.

   6.  Network infrastructure administered by a single administrative
       domain.  This is consistent with operation within a data center,
       and not across the Internet.

3.5.  Overlay Networking Work Areas

   There are three specific and separate potential work areas needed to
   realize an overlay solution.  The areas correspond to different
   possible "on-the-wire" protocols, where distinct entities interact
   with each other.

   One area of work concerns the address dissemination protocol an NVE
   uses to build and maintain the mapping tables it uses to deliver
   encapsulated packets to their proper destination.  One approach is to
   build mapping tables entirely via learning (as is done in 802.1

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 12]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   networks).  But to provide better scaling properties, a more
   sophisticated approach is needed, i.e., the use of a specialized
   control plane protocol.  While there are some advantages to using or
   leveraging an existing protocol for maintaining mapping tables, the
   fact that large numbers of NVE's will likely reside in hypervisors
   places constraints on the resources (cpu and memory) that can be
   dedicated to such functions.

   From an architectural perspective, one can view the address mapping
   dissemination problem as having two distinct and separable
   components.  The first component consists of a back-end "oracle" that
   is responsible for distributing and maintaining the mapping
   information for the entire overlay system.  The second component
   consists of the on-the-wire protocols an NVE uses when interacting
   with the oracle.

   The back-end oracle could provide high performance, high resiliency,
   failover, etc. and could be implemented in significantly different
   ways.  For example, one model uses a traditional, centralized
   "directory-based" database, using replicated instances for
   reliability and failover.  A second model involves using and possibly
   extending an existing routing protocol (e.g., BGP, IS-IS, etc.).  To
   support different architectural models, it is useful to have one
   standard protocol for the NVE-oracle interaction while allowing
   different protocols and architectural approaches for the oracle
   itself.  Separating the two allows NVEs to transparently interact
   with different types of oracles, i.e., either of the two
   architectural models described above.  Having separate protocols
   could also allow for a simplified NVE that only interacts with the
   oracle for the mapping table entries it needs and allows the oracle
   (and its associated protocols) to evolve independently over time with
   minimal impact to the NVEs.

   A third work area considers the attachment and detachment of VMs (or
   Tenant End Systems [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework] more generally) from
   a specific virtual network instance.  When a VM attaches, the Network
   Virtualization Edge (NVE) [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework] associates
   the VM with a specific overlay for the purposes of tunneling traffic
   sourced from or destined to the VM.  When a VM disconnects, it is
   removed from the overlay and the NVE effectively terminates any
   tunnels associated with the VM.  To achieve this functionality, a
   standardized interaction between the NVE and hypervisor may be
   needed, for example in the case where the NVE resides on a separate
   device from the VM.

   In summary, there are three areas of potential work.  The first area
   concerns the oracle itself and any on-the-wire protocols it needs.  A
   second area concerns the interaction between the oracle and NVEs.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 13]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   The third work area concerns protocols associated with attaching and
   detaching a VM from a particular virtual network instance.  All three
   work areas are important to the development of scalable,
   interoperable solutions.

4.  Related  IETF and IEEE Work

   The following subsections discuss related IETF and IEEE work in
   progress, the items are not meant to be complete coverage of all IETF
   and IEEE data center related work, nor are the descriptions
   comprehensive.  Each area is currently trying to address certain
   limitations of today's data center networks, e.g., scaling is a
   common issue for every area listed and multi-tenancy and VM mobility
   are important focus areas as well.  Comparing and evaluating the work
   result and progress of each work area listed is out of scope of this
   document.  The intent of this section is to provide a reference to
   the interested readers.

4.1.  L3 BGP/MPLS IP VPNs

   BGP/MPLS IP VPNs [RFC4364] support multi-tenancy address overlapping,
   VPN traffic isolation, and address separation between tenants and
   network infrastructure.  The BGP/MPLS control plane is used to
   distribute the VPN labels and the tenant IP addresses which identify
   the tenants (or to be more specific, the particular VPN/VN) and
   tenant IP addresses.  Deployment of enterprise L3 VPNs has been shown
   to scale to thousands of VPNs and millions of VPN prefixes.  BGP/MPLS
   IP VPNs are currently deployed in some large enterprise data centers.
   The potential limitation for deploying BGP/MPLS IP VPNs in data
   center environments is the practicality of using BGP in the data
   center, especially reaching into the servers or hypervisors.  There
   may be computing work force skill set issues, equipment support
   issues, and potential new scaling challenges.  A combination of BGP
   and lighter weight IP signaling protocols, e.g., XMPP, have been
   proposed to extend the solutions into DC environment
   [I-D.marques-l3vpn-end-system], while taking advantage of building in
   VPN features with its rich policy support; it is especially useful
   for inter-tenant connectivity.

4.2.  L2 BGP/MPLS IP VPNs

   Ethernet Virtual Private Networks (E-VPNs) [I-D.ietf-l2vpn-evpn]
   provide an emulated L2 service in which each tenant has its own
   Ethernet network over a common IP or MPLS infrastructure and a BGP/
   MPLS control plane is used to distribute the tenant MAC addresses and
   the MPLS labels that identify the tenants and tenant MAC addresses.
   Within the BGP/MPLS control plane a thirty two bit Ethernet Tag is

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 14]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   used to identify the broadcast domains (VLANs) associated with a
   given L2 VLAN service instance and these Ethernet tags are mapped to
   VLAN IDs understood by the tenant at the service edges.  This means
   that the limit of 4096 VLANs is associated with an individual tenant
   service edge, enabling a much higher level of scalability.
   Interconnection between tenants is also allowed in a controlled
   fashion.

   VM Mobility [I-D.raggarwa-data-center-mobility] introduces the
   concept of a combined L2/L3 VPN service in order to support the
   mobility of individual Virtual Machines (VMs) between Data Centers
   connected over a common IP or MPLS infrastructure.

4.3.  IEEE 802.1aq - Shortest Path Bridging

   Shortest Path Bridging (SPB-M) is an IS-IS based overlay for L2
   Ethernets.  SPB-M supports multi-pathing and addresses a number of
   shortcoming in the original Ethernet Spanning Tree Protocol.  SPB-M
   uses IEEE 802.1ah MAC-in-MAC encapsulation and supports a 24-bit
   I-SID, which can be used to identify virtual network instances.
   SPB-M is entirely L2 based, extending the L2 Ethernet bridging model.

4.4.  ARMD

   ARMD is chartered to look at data center scaling issues with a focus
   on address resolution.  ARMD is currently chartered to develop a
   problem statement and is not currently developing solutions.  While
   an overlay-based approach may address some of the "pain points" that
   have been raised in ARMD (e.g., better support for multi-tenancy), an
   overlay approach may also push some of the L2 scaling concerns (e.g.,
   excessive flooding) to the IP level (flooding via IP multicast).
   Analysis will be needed to understand the scaling tradeoffs of an
   overlay based approach compared with existing approaches.  On the
   other hand, existing IP-based approaches such as proxy ARP may help
   mitigate some concerns.

4.5.  TRILL

   TRILL is an L2-based approach aimed at improving deficiencies and
   limitations with current Ethernet networks and STP in particular.
   Although it differs from Shortest Path Bridging in many architectural
   and implementation details, it is similar in that is provides an L2-
   based service to end systems.  TRILL as defined today, supports only
   the standard (and limited) 12-bit VLAN model.  Approaches to extend
   TRILL to support more than 4094 VLANs are currently under
   investigation [I-D.ietf-trill-fine-labeling]

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 15]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

4.6.  L2VPNs

   The IETF has specified a number of approaches for connecting L2
   domains together as part of the L2VPN Working Group.  That group,
   however has historically been focused on Provider-provisioned L2
   VPNs, where the service provider participates in management and
   provisioning of the VPN.  In addition, much of the target environment
   for such deployments involves carrying L2 traffic over WANs.  Overlay
   approaches are intended be used within data centers where the overlay
   network is managed by the data center operator, rather than by an
   outside party.  While overlays can run across the Internet as well,
   they will extend well into the data center itself (e.g., up to and
   including hypervisors) and include large numbers of machines within
   the data center itself.

   Other L2VPN approaches, such as L2TP [RFC2661] require significant
   tunnel state at the encapsulating and decapsulating end points.
   Overlays require less tunnel state than other approaches, which is
   important to allow overlays to scale to hundreds of thousands of end
   points.  It is assumed that smaller switches (i.e., virtual switches
   in hypervisors or the adjacent devices to which VMs connect) will be
   part of the overlay network and be responsible for encapsulating and
   decapsulating packets.

4.7.  Proxy Mobile IP

   Proxy Mobile IP [RFC5213] [RFC5844] makes use of the GRE Key Field
   [RFC5845] [RFC6245], but not in a way that supports multi-tenancy.

4.8.  LISP

   LISP[I-D.ietf-lisp] essentially provides an IP over IP overlay where
   the internal addresses are end station Identifiers and the outer IP
   addresses represent the location of the end station within the core
   IP network topology.  The LISP overlay header uses a 24-bit Instance
   ID used to support overlapping inner IP addresses.

5.  Further Work

   It is believed that overlay-based approaches may be able to reduce
   the overall amount of flooding and other multicast and broadcast
   related traffic (e.g, ARP and ND) currently experienced within
   current data centers with a large flat L2 network.  Further analysis
   is needed to characterize expected improvements.

   There are a number of VPN approaches that provide some if not all of
   the desired semantics of virtual networks.  A gap analysis will be

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 16]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   needed to assess how well existing approaches satisfy the
   requirements.

6.  Summary

   This document has argued that network virtualization using overlays
   addresses a number of issues being faced as data centers scale in
   size.  In addition, careful study of current data center problems is
   needed for development of proper requirements and standard solutions.

   Three potential work were identified.  The first involves the
   interaction that take place when a VM attaches or detaches from an
   overlay.  A second involves the protocol an NVE would use to
   communicate with a backend "oracle" to learn and disseminate mapping
   information about the VMs the NVE communicates with.  The third
   potential work area involves the backend oracle itself, i.e., how it
   provides failover and how it interacts with oracles in other domains.

7.  Acknowledgments

   Helpful comments and improvements to this document have come from
   John Drake, Ariel Hendel, Vinit Jain, Thomas Morin, Benson Schliesser
   and many others on the mailing list.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

9.  Security Considerations

   TBD

10.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-l2vpn-evpn]
              Sajassi, A., Aggarwal, R., Henderickx, W., Balus, F.,
              Isaac, A., and J. Uttaro, "BGP MPLS Based Ethernet VPN",
              draft-ietf-l2vpn-evpn-01 (work in progress), July 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-lisp]
              Farinacci, D., Fuller, V., Meyer, D., and D. Lewis,
              "Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP)",
              draft-ietf-lisp-23 (work in progress), May 2012.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 17]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   [I-D.ietf-trill-fine-labeling]
              Eastlake, D., Zhang, M., Agarwal, P., Perlman, R., and D.
              Dutt, "TRILL: Fine-Grained Labeling",
              draft-ietf-trill-fine-labeling-01 (work in progress),
              June 2012.

   [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework]
              Lasserre, M., Balus, F., Morin, T., Bitar, N., and Y.
              Rekhter, "Framework for DC Network Virtualization",
              draft-lasserre-nvo3-framework-03 (work in progress),
              July 2012.

   [I-D.marques-l3vpn-end-system]
              Marques, P., Fang, L., Pan, P., Shukla, A., Napierala, M.,
              and N. Bitar, "BGP-signaled end-system IP/VPNs.",
              draft-marques-l3vpn-end-system-07 (work in progress),
              August 2012.

   [I-D.raggarwa-data-center-mobility]
              Aggarwal, R., Rekhter, Y., Henderickx, W., Shekhar, R.,
              and L. Fang, "Data Center Mobility based on BGP/MPLS, IP
              Routing and NHRP", draft-raggarwa-data-center-mobility-03
              (work in progress), June 2012.

   [RFC2661]  Townsley, W., Valencia, A., Rubens, A., Pall, G., Zorn,
              G., and B. Palter, "Layer Two Tunneling Protocol "L2TP"",
              RFC 2661, August 1999.

   [RFC4364]  Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
              Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, February 2006.

   [RFC5213]  Gundavelli, S., Leung, K., Devarapalli, V., Chowdhury, K.,
              and B. Patil, "Proxy Mobile IPv6", RFC 5213, August 2008.

   [RFC5844]  Wakikawa, R. and S. Gundavelli, "IPv4 Support for Proxy
              Mobile IPv6", RFC 5844, May 2010.

   [RFC5845]  Muhanna, A., Khalil, M., Gundavelli, S., and K. Leung,
              "Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) Key Option for Proxy
              Mobile IPv6", RFC 5845, June 2010.

   [RFC6245]  Yegani, P., Leung, K., Lior, A., Chowdhury, K., and J.
              Navali, "Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) Key Extension
              for Mobile IPv4", RFC 6245, May 2011.

   [RFC6325]  Perlman, R., Eastlake, D., Dutt, D., Gai, S., and A.
              Ghanwani, "Routing Bridges (RBridges): Base Protocol
              Specification", RFC 6325, July 2011.

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 18]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   [SPBM]     "IEEE P802.1aq/D4.5 Draft Standard for Local and
              Metropolitan Area Networks -- Media Access Control (MAC)
              Bridges and Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks,
              Amendment 8: Shortest Path Bridging", February 2012.

Appendix A.  Change Log

A.1.  Changes from draft-narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-04.txt

   1.  This document has only one substantive change relative to
       draft-narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-04.txt.  Two
       sentences were removed per the discussion that led to WG adoption
       of this document.

Authors' Addresses

   Thomas Narten (editor)
   IBM

   Email: narten@us.ibm.com

   David Black
   EMC

   Email: david.black@emc.com

   Dinesh Dutt

   Email: ddutt.ietf@hobbesdutt.com

   Luyuan Fang
   Cisco Systems
   111 Wood Avenue South
   Iselin, NJ  08830
   USA

   Email: lufang@cisco.com

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 19]
Internet-Draft     Overlays for Network Virtualization    September 2012

   Eric Gray (editor)
   Ericsson

   Email: eric.gray@ericsson.com

   Lawrence Kreeger
   Cisco

   Email: kreeger@cisco.com

   Maria Napierala
   AT&T
   200 Laurel Avenue
   Middletown, NJ  07748
   USA

   Email: mnapierala@att.com

   Murari Sridharan
   Microsoft

   Email: muraris@microsoft.com

Narten, et al.            Expires March 9, 2013                [Page 20]