You can deploy the VMware SD-WAN HA on VMware ESXi using the supported topologies.

While deploying HA on VMware ESXi, consider the following limitations:

Limitations of VMware ESXi

  • vSwitches do not support the Link Loss Forwarding feature. This feature ensures that the failures on the physical interface are propagated to the virtual interfaces of the vSwitch and thereby supporting link level failures. As vSwitches do not support this option, even if a physical adapter goes down, the VMware Edges will see the link up and they would not failover.
  • vSwitches do not allow to configure specific VLANs on a port group if you want to allow more than one VLAN. Instead of the specific VLANs, you need to configure 4095, which means allowing all the VLANs.

Limitations of VMware SD-WAN HA

  • There is no generic way of failure detection that will work on all the hardware, virtual, and uCPE platforms.

VMware SD-WAN supports the following topologies while deploying HA on VMware ESXi:

Topology 1: Legacy HA with WAN links

The following image illustrates a topology with legacy HA along with WAN links that have been uplinked using a single physical adapter and one routed LAN or trunked LAN through single physical adapter.

Topology 2: Enhanced HA with WAN Links

The following topology shows enhanced HA with three WAN links.

Topology 3: Enhanced HA with Subinterfaces

The following image shows Enhanced HA with subinterfaces on the WAN interfaces with VLAN ID as 4095 on port group.

Topology 4: Dell IT

The following image shows Dell IT using VEP hardware.