FREMONT, CA: Cisco announces support for Ethernet VPN VXLAN overlay protocol on its Nexus 9000 series switches in an attempt to extend standards-based interoperability. The company said that the support for overlay protocols complements its open Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) approach.

BGP – Border Gateway Protocol – is used extensively for large scale routing of networks. The Cisco BGP Control Plane for Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) delivers scalable BGP solutions for multitenant data centers.

Some of the benefits of Cisco BGP EVPN Control Plane for VXLAN include: transparent support for physical and virtual hosts; transparent virtual machine mobility with optimized east-west routing; support for internet-scale networks; secured multitenant environment.

Operational flexibility and integration with third party overlay controllers is achieved through Nexus 9000’s support for BGP Ethernet VPN (EVPN) protocol. Nexus 9000 now offers choice of traditional topologies, VXLAN overlays, and Cisco ACI for policy-based automation.

VXLAN is a multi-vendor overlay technology and it is a product of Cisco along with other virtualization platform vendors. Through overlay networks, a basement for scalable multi-tenant cloud networks can be achieved. BGP EVPN further streamlines this technology and yields simplified ways for large scale deployment of overlay networks. Running OpenStack on top a BGP EVPN controller allows native workload mobility support.