Internet Engineering Task Force                           T. Narten, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                       IBM
Intended status: Informational                              E. Gray, Ed.
Expires: April 26, 2013                                         Ericsson
                                                                D. Black
                                                                     EMC
                                                                 D. Dutt

                                                                 L. Fang
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                              L. Kreeger
                                                                   Cisco
                                                            M. Napierala
                                                                    AT&T
                                                            M. Sridharan
                                                               Microsoft
                                                        October 23, 2012


         Problem Statement: Overlays for Network Virtualization
              draft-ietf-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-01

Abstract

   This document describes issues associated with providing multi-
   tenancy in large data center networks and how these issues may be
   addressed using an overlay-based network virtualization approach.  A
   key multi-tenancy requirement is traffic isolation, so that one
   tenant's traffic is not visible to any other tenant.  Another
   requirement is address space isolation, so that different tenants can
   use the same address space within different virtual networks.
   Traffic and address space isolation is achieved by assigning one or
   more virtual networks to each tenant, where traffic within a virtual
   network can only cross into another virtual network in a controlled
   fashion (e.g., via a configured router and/or a security gateway).
   Additional functionality is required to provision virtual networks,
   associating a virtual machine's 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



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   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/.

   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 April 26, 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.


























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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.  Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.  Problem Areas  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.1.  Need For Dynamic Provisioning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.2.  Virtual Machine Mobility Limitations . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     3.3.  Inadequate Forwarding Table Sizes  . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.4.  Need to Decouple Logical and Physical Configuration  . . .  7
     3.5.  Need For Address Separation Between Virtual Networks . . .  8
     3.6.  Need For Address Separation Between Virtual Networks
           and Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.7.  Optimal Forwarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.  Using Network Overlays to Provide Virtual Networks . . . . . .  9
     4.1.  Overview of Network Overlays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     4.2.  Communication Between Virtual and Non-virtualized
           Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.3.  Communication Between Virtual Networks . . . . . . . . . . 11
     4.4.  Overlay Design Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
     4.5.  Control Plane Overlay Networking Work Areas  . . . . . . . 13
     4.6.  Data Plane Work Areas  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   5.  Related IETF and IEEE Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     5.1.  BGP/MPLS IP VPNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.2.  BGP/MPLS Ethernet VPNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.3.  802.1 VLANs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
     5.4.  IEEE 802.1aq - Shortest Path Bridging  . . . . . . . . . . 16
     5.5.  ARMD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
     5.6.  TRILL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     5.7.  L2VPNs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     5.8.  Proxy Mobile IP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     5.9.  LISP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     5.10. VDP  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   6.  Further Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Summary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   8.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   9.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   10. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   Appendix A.  Change Log  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     A.1.  Changes From -00 to -01  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     A.2.  Changes from
           draft-narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-04.txt . . . . 21
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21








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1.  Introduction

   Data Centers are increasingly being consolidated and outsourced in an
   effort to improve the deployment time of applications and 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 (e.g., a firewall).

   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, tenant systems connect to a virtual
   network.  To tenant systems, 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 on whose behalf one or more
   specific virtual network instance and its associated services
   (whether virtual or physical) are managed.  In a cloud environment, a
   tenant would correspond to the customer that is using a particular
   virtual network.  However, a tenant may also find it useful to create
   multiple different virtual network instances.  Hence, there is a one-



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   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, with traffic crossing from one virtual network to
   another only when allowed by policy.

   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.

   The document outlines problems encountered in scaling the number of
   isolated virtual networks in a data center.  Furthermore, the
   document presents issues associated with managing those virtual
   networks, in relation to operations, such as virtual network
   creation/deletion and end-node membership change.  Finally, the
   document makes the case that an overlay based approach has a number
   of advantages over traditional, non-overlay approaches.  The purpose
   of this document is to identify the set of issues 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.

   This document is the problem statement for the "Network
   Virtualization over L3" (NVO3) Working Group.  NVO3 is focused on the
   construction of overlay networks that operate over an IP (L3)
   underlay transport network.  NVO3 expects to provide both L2 service
   and IP service to end devices (though perhaps as two different
   solutions).  Some deployments require an L2 service, others an L3
   service, and some may require both.

   Section 2 gives terminology.  Section 3 describes the problem space
   details.  Section 4 describes overlay networks in more detail.
   Sections 5 and 6 review related and further work, while Section 7
   closes with a summary.







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2.  Terminology

   This document uses the same terminology as
   [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework].  In addition, this document use the
   following terms.

   In-Band Virtual Network:  A Virtual Network that separates tenant
      traffic without hiding tenant forwarding information from the
      physical infrastructure.  The Tenant System may also retain
      visibility of a tenant within the underlying physical
      infrastructure.  IEEE 802.1 networks using C-VIDs are an example
      of an in-band Virtual Network.

   Overlay Virtual Network:  A Virtual Network in which the separation
      of tenants is hidden from the underlying physical infrastructure.
      That is, the underlying transport network does not need to know
      about tenancy separation to correctly forward traffic.

   VLANs:  An informal term referring to IEEE 802.1 networks using
      C-VIDs.


3.  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.

3.1.  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
   services to multiple customers over the same infrastructure.  In
   current systems, it can be difficult to provision resources for
   individual tenants (e.g., QoS) in such a way that provisioned
   properties migrate automatically when services are dynamically moved
   around within the data center to optimize workloads.

3.2.  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



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   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 data center networks, servers are typically 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.

3.3.  Inadequate Forwarding Table Sizes

   Today's virtualized environments place additional demands on the
   forwarding tables of forwarding nodes in the physical infrastructure.
   The core problem is that location independence results in specific
   end state information being propagated into the forwarding system
   (e.g., /32 host routes in L3 networks, or MAC addresses in L2
   networks).  In L2 networks, for instance, instead of just one link-
   layer address per server, the switching infrastructure may have to
   learn addresses of the individual VMs (which could range in the 100s
   per server).  This increases the demand on a forwarding node's table
   capacity compared to non-virtualized environments.

3.4.  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.  In addition, when VMs
   migrate, the physical network (e.g., access lists) may need to be
   reconfigured which can be time consuming and error prone.

   In order to limit the broadcast domain of each VLAN, multi-



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   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 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 the expansion requires that the scope of the underlying L2 VLAN
   expand beyond its original pod boundary.

3.5.  Need For Address Separation Between Virtual Networks

   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.

3.6.  Need For Address Separation Between Virtual Networks 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
   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.

3.7.  Optimal Forwarding

   Another problem area relates to the changing of optimal paths when a
   VM moves from one location to another.  In the simplest case, a
   virtual network may have 2 external routers (whether for inter-VN
   traffic, or traffic external to all VNs).  When a VM migrates to a
   new location within the data center, the closest router may change,
   i.e., the VM may get better service by switching to the "closer"
   router.  But IP does not normally distinguish between multiple
   routers on the same subnet.  All routers are considered one-hop away.



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   The issue is further complicated when middleboxes (e.g., load-
   balancers, firewalls, etc.) must be traversed.  Middle boxes may have
   session state that must be preserved for ongoing communication, and
   traffic must continue to flow through the middle box, regardless of
   which router is "closest".


4.  Using Network Overlays to Provide Virtual Networks

   Virtual Networks are used to isolate a tenant's traffic from that of
   other tenants (or even traffic within the same tenant network 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 Tenant Systems attached to a virtual
       network are delivered as expected to other Tenant Systems on that
       virtual network and may exit a virtual network only through
       controlled exit points such as a security gateway.  Likewise,
       packets sourced from outside of the virtual network may enter the
       virtual network only through controlled entry points, such as a
       security gateway.

4.1.  Overview of Network Overlays

   To address the problems described in Section 3, a network overlay
   approach 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, called a Network
   Virtualization Edge (NVE).  The encapsulation identifies the
   destination of the device that will perform the decapsulation (i.e.,
   the egress NVE) 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.  When processing and forwarding packets, three distinct
   and logically separable steps take place:



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   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 NVE device.  The destination address will be the
       underlay address of the NVE device doing the decapsulation and is
       an IP address.

   2.  Once the mapping has been determined, the ingress overlay NVE
       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 NVE
       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 NVE device can be a traditional switch or
   router or the virtual switch residing inside a hypervisor.
   Furthermore, the 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 (SPBM) [SPBM].

   In the data plane, an overlay header provides a place to carry either
   the virtual network identifier, or an identifier that is locally-
   significant to the edge device.  In both cases, the identifier in the
   overlay header specifies which specific virtual network the data
   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 or just the IP
   packet.

   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



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   implied by L2 properties such as VLAN numbering, or L3 properties as
   the IP subnet number.

   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 (e.g., a gateway) that has connectivity to both virtual
   network instances.  Without the existence of a gateway 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.

4.2.  Communication Between Virtual and Non-virtualized Networks

   Not all communication will be between devices connected to
   virtualized networks.  Devices using overlays will continue to access
   devices and make use of services on 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).

   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.

4.3.  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



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   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 forwarded between virtual networks.

4.4.  Overlay Design Characteristics

   Below are some of the characteristics of environments that must be
   taken into account by the overlay technology.

   1.  Highly distributed systems: The overlay should work in an
       environment where there could be many thousands of access
       switches (e.g. residing within the hypervisors) and many more
       Tenant 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 NVEs
       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 Tenant Systems: Tenant Systems connected to
       virtual networks can be very dynamic, both in terms of creation/
       deletion/power-on/off and in terms of mobility from one access
       device to another.

   4.  Be incrementally deployable, without necessarily requiring major
       upgrade of the entire network: The first hop device (or end
       system) that adds and removes the overlay header may require new
       software and may require new hardware (e.g., for improved
       performance).  But the rest of the network should not need to
       change just to enable the use of overlays.

   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.



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

4.5.  Control Plane Overlay Networking Work Areas

   There are three specific and separate potential work areas in the
   area of control plane protocols 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
   networks).  Another approach is to use 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.  For this document, we use
   the term "oracle" in its generic sense, referring to an entity that
   supplies answers, without regard to how it knows the answers it is
   providing.  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.



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   A third work area considers the attachment and detachment of VMs (or
   Tenant Systems [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework] more generally) from a
   specific virtual network instance.  When a VM attaches, the NVE
   associates the VM with a specific overlay for the purposes of
   tunneling traffic sourced from or destined to the VM.  When a VM
   disconnects, the NVE should notify the oracle that the Tenant System
   to NVE address mapping is no longer valid.  In addition, if this VM
   was the last remaining member of the virtual network, then the NVE
   can also terminate any tunnels used to deliver tenant multi-
   destination packets within the VN to the NVE.  In the case where an
   NVE and hypervisor are on separate physical devices separated by an
   access network, a standardized protocol may be needed.

   In summary, there are three areas of potential work.  The first area
   concerns the implementation of the oracle function itself and any
   protocols it needs (e.g., if implemented in a distributed fashion).
   A second area concerns the interaction between the oracle and NVEs.
   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.

4.6.  Data Plane Work Areas

   The data plane carries encapsulated packets for Tenant Systems.  The
   data plane encapsulation header carries a VN Context identifier
   [I-D.lasserre-nvo3-framework] for the virtual network to which the
   data packet belongs.  Numerous encapsulation or tunneling protocols
   already exist that can be leveraged.  In the absence of strong and
   compelling justification, it would not seem necessary or helpful to
   develop yet another encapsulation format just for NVO3.


5.  Related IETF and IEEE Work

   The following subsections discuss related IETF and IEEE work.  The
   items are not meant to provide complete coverage of all IETF and IEEE
   data center related work, nor should the descriptions be considered
   comprehensive.  Each area aims to address particular limitations of
   today's data center networks.  In all areas, scaling is a common
   theme as are multi-tenancy and VM mobility.  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.  Note that NVO3 is scoped to
   running over an IP/L3 underlay network.






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5.1.  BGP/MPLS IP VPNs

   BGP/MPLS IP VPNs [RFC4364] support multi-tenancy, VPN traffic
   isolation, address overlapping 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 that identify
   the tenants (or to be more specific, the particular VPN/virtual
   network) 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 built-in
   VPN features with its rich policy support; it is especially useful
   for inter-tenant connectivity.

5.2.  BGP/MPLS Ethernet 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.  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
   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.

5.3.  802.1 VLANs

   VLANs are a well understood construct in the networking industry,
   providing an L2 service via an in-band L2 Virtual Network.  A VLAN is
   an L2 bridging construct that provides the semantics of virtual
   networks mentioned above: a MAC address can be kept unique within a



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   VLAN, but it is not necessarily unique across VLANs.  Traffic scoped
   within a VLAN (including broadcast and multicast traffic) can be kept
   within the VLAN it originates from.  Traffic forwarded from one VLAN
   to another typically involves router (L3) processing.  The forwarding
   table look up operation may be keyed on {VLAN, MAC address} tuples.

   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.  Various types of VLANs are available
   today, which can be used for network virtualization even together.
   The C-VLAN, S-VLAN and B-VLAN IDs are 12 bits.  The 24-bit I-SID
   allows the support of more than 16 million virtual networks.
   Altogether, 60 bits are available for network virtualization in the
   Ethernet header today.

5.4.  IEEE 802.1aq - Shortest Path Bridging

   Shortest Path Bridging (SPBM) [SPBM] is an IS-IS based overlay that
   operates over L2 Ethernets.  SPBM supports multi-pathing and
   addresses a number of shortcoming in the original Ethernet Spanning
   Tree Protocol.  SPBM uses IEEE 802.1ah PBB (MAC-in-MAC) encapsulation
   and supports a 24-bit I-SID, which can be used to identify virtual
   network instances.  SPBM provides multi-pathing and supports easy
   virtual network creation or update.

   SPB extends IS-IS in order to perform link-state routing among core
   SPBM nodes, obviating the need for learning for communication among
   core SPBM nodes.  Learning is still used to build and maintain the
   mapping tables of edge nodes to encapsulate Tenant System traffic for
   transport across the SPBM core.

   SPB is compatible with all other 802.1 standards thus allows
   leveraging of other features, e.g., VSI Discovery Protocol (VDP), OAM
   or scalability solutions.

5.5.  ARMD

   The ARMD WG examined data center scaling issues with a focus on
   address resolution and developed a problem statement document
   [I-D.ietf-armd-problem-statement].  While an overlay-based approach
   may address some of the "pain points" that were 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.




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5.6.  TRILL

   TRILL is a network protocol that provides an Ethernet L2 service to
   end systems and is designed to operate over any L2 link type.  TRILL
   establishes forwarding paths using IS-IS routing and encapsulates
   traffic within its own TRILL header.  TRILL as defined today,
   supports only the standard (and limited) 12-bit C-VID identifier.
   Approaches to extend TRILL to support more than 4094 VLANs are
   currently under investigation [I-D.ietf-trill-fine-labeling]

5.7.  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 as discussed in this document 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 [RFC3931] 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.

5.8.  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.

5.9.  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.





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5.10.  VDP

   VDP is the Virtual Station Interface (VSI) Discovery and
   Configuration Protocol specified by IEEE P802.1Qbg [Qbg].  VDP is a
   protocol that supports the association of a VSI with a port.  VDP is
   run between the end system (e.g., a hypervisor) and its adjacent
   switch, i.e., the device on the edge of the network.  VDP is used for
   example to communicate to the switch that a Virtual Machine (Virtual
   Station) is moving, i.e. designed for VM migration.


6.  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
   needed to assess how well existing approaches satisfy the
   requirements.


7.  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.

   This document identified three potential control protocol work areas.
   The first involves a backend "oracle" and how it learns and
   distributes the mapping information NVEs use when processing tenant
   traffic.  A second involves the protocol an NVE would use to
   communicate with the backend oracle to obtain the mapping
   information.  The third potential work concerns the interactions that
   take place when a VM attaches or detaches from an specific virtual
   network instance.


8.  Acknowledgments

   Helpful comments and improvements to this document have come from
   John Drake, Janos Farkas, Ilango Ganga, Ariel Hendel, Vinit Jain,
   Petr Lapukhov, Thomas Morin, Benson Schliesser, Lucy Yong and many
   others on the NVO3 mailing list.



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9.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.


10.  Security Considerations

   Because this document describes the problem space associated with the
   need for virtualization of networks in complex, large-scale, data-
   center networks, it does not itself introduce any security risks.
   However, it is clear that security concerns need to be a
   consideration of any solutions proposed to address this problem
   space.


11.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-armd-problem-statement]
              Narten, T., Karir, M., and I. Foo, "Address Resolution
              Problems in Large Data Center Networks",
              draft-ietf-armd-problem-statement-04 (work in progress),
              October 2012.

   [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.

   [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-02 (work in progress),
              October 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.",



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              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.

   [Qbg]      "IEEE P802.1Qbg Edge Virtual Bridging", February 2012.

   [RFC3931]  Lau, J., Townsley, M., and I. Goyret, "Layer Two Tunneling
              Protocol - Version 3 (L2TPv3)", RFC 3931, March 2005.

   [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.

   [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 -00 to -01

   1.  Numerous editorial and clarity improvements.





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   2.  Picked up updated terminology from the framework document (e.g.,
       Tenant System).

   3.  Significant changes regarding IEEE 802.1 Ethernets and VLANs.
       All text moved to the Related Work section, where the technology
       is summarized.

   4.  Removed section on Forwarding Table Size limitations.  This issue
       only occurs in some deployments with L2 bridging, and is not
       considered a motivating factor for the NVO3 work.

   5.  Added paragraph in Introduction that makes clear that NVO3 is
       focused on providing both L2 and L3 service to end systems, and
       that IP is assumed as the underlay transport in the data center.

   6.  Added new section (2.6) on Optimal Forwarding.

   7.  Added a section on Data Plane issues.

   8.  Significant improvement to Section describing SPBM.

   9.  Added sub-section on VDP in "Related Work"

A.2.  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


   Eric Gray (editor)
   Ericsson

   Email: eric.gray@ericsson.com








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   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


   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












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