EVPN (Ethernet VPN) is a standards-based BGP control plane that provides the ability to extend Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity between different data centers.

The EVPN feature has the following capabilities and limitations:
  • Multi-Protocol BGP (MP-BGP) EVPN between NSX Edge and physical routers.
  • VXLAN used as the overlay for MP-BGP EVPN.
  • Multi-tenancy in MP-BGP EVPN by using VRF instances.
  • Support for EVPN type-5 routes only.
  • NSX-T generates unique router MAC for every NSX edge VTEP in the EVPN domain. However, there may be other nodes in the network that are not managed by NSX-T, for example, physical routers. You must make sure that the router MACs are unique across all the VTEPs in the EVPN domain.
  • The EVPN feature supports NSX Edge to be either the ingress or the egress of the EVPN virtual tunnel endpoint. If an NSX Edge node receives EVPN type-5 prefixes from its eBGP peer that need to be redistributed to another eBGP peer, the routes will be re-advertised without any change to the nexthop.
  • In a multi-path network topology, it is recommended that you do not enable ECMP on the gateway that has EVPN configured.

Configuration Prerequisites

  • Virtual Router (vRouter) deployed on VMware ESXi hypervisor.
  • Peer physical router supporting EVPN type-5 routes.

Configuration Steps

  • Create a VNI pool. See Add a VNI Pool.
  • Configure a VLAN Segment. See Add a Segment.
  • Configure an overlay Segment and specify one or more VLAN ranges. See Add a Segment.
  • Configure a tier-0 gateway to support EVPN. See Add a Tier-0 Gateway.
  • Under EVPN Settings, select a VNI pool and create EVPN Tunnel Endpoints.
  • Under Route Distinguisher for VRF Gateways, configure RD Admin Address for the automatic route distinguisher use case.
  • Configure one or more external interfaces on the tier-0 gateway and connect to the VLAN Segment.
  • Configure BGP neighbors with the peer physical router. Add route filter with IPv4 and L2VPN EVPN Address Families.
  • Configure Route Re-Distribution. Select EVPN TEP IP under Tier-0 Subnets along with other sources.
  • Configure VRF to support EVPN. See Add a VRF Gateway.
  • Under VRF Settings, specify an EVPN Transit VNI.
  • Specify Route Distinguisher for a manual route distinguisher.
  • Specify Import/Export Route Targets for manual route targets.
  • Add service interface on VRF for each edge node and connect to the Overlay Segment. Specify an Access VLAN ID for each service interface.
  • Configure per VRF BGP neighbors with the peer vRouter. The routes learned over the VRF BGP sessions are redistributed by the NSX Edge to the peer physical router over the MP-BGP EVPN session.