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So our next component of SD-WAN is the V-Smart Controller.

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Now as we mentioned previously, the V-Smart Controller is really the brains of

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the operation.

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This is the device that tells all of the WAN-edge devices what they're supposed

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to be doing.

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So it gets the information of what it's supposed to be enforcing from V-Manage.

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So as administrators, of course, we put everything into V-Manage.
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So as administrators, of course, we put everything into V-Manage.

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V-Manage pushes that out to the V-Smart Controllers, and then the V-Smart Cont

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rollers control the

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actual physical or virtual routers that are doing the packet forwarding.

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So let's jump in and take a look at a little bit more detail on these V-Smart

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Controllers.

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Much like the V-Manage Server, the V-Smart Controller is also a Linux-based

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server, but

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again its job is to handle the control plane.
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again its job is to handle the control plane.

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This is what's controlling all of the SD-WAN edges.

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So like the V-Manage Server is for the management plane, this is the control

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plane.

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As part of that control, this is going to assist those WAN-edge routers, not

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only of

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course with their configuration and such, but also to actually form those data

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plane

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secure tunnels that it's going to be using to actually forward the traffic.
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secure tunnels that it's going to be using to actually forward the traffic.

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Now for this, V-Smart actually uses several different components, the first of

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which are

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the control plane connections.

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These are tunnels that are built between redundant V-Smart Controllers and they

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're built out

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to all of the WAN-edge devices.

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This is what it's using to do the control.

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As far as the protocol it uses, it uses something called the Overlay Management
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As far as the protocol it uses, it uses something called the Overlay Management

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Protocol or OMP.

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For those of you who may be familiar with BGP or Border Gateway Protocol, OMP

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actually

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has quite a lot in common with BGP except that it adds a lot more to the

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protocol.

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Not only does this carry all of the routing information, but it also handles

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things like

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collecting the statistics from the WAN-edge routers so that SD-WAN can display

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how many
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packets per second are going through a particular interface on a device.

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So it collects all this information, it pushes the configuration out to the

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devices, and it

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handles things like your routing protocols, or more specifically your routing

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information.

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OMP is the routing protocol itself.

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Again this is used between the V-Smart Controller and the WAN-edge devices.

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It also handles authentication, key reflection, and any re-keying that needs to
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It also handles authentication, key reflection, and any re-keying that needs to

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occur for our

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secure tunnels.

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This is what actually runs the policy engine, which is again what pushes all of

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our policies

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out to the WAN-edge devices, and it actually pushes that out using NetConf.

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It also supports a local CLI in case we need to get into the command line and

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do any configuration

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on the V-Smart Controller itself.

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So as we sort of mentioned, OMP is the routing protocol.
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So as we sort of mentioned, OMP is the routing protocol.

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This is what creates that central routing table, which is then disseminated or

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sent out to all

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of those WAN-edge devices.

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So understand, you could still use OSPF or EIGRP or some other LAN protocol on

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the WAN-edge

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devices talking to the other devices at each location.

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OMP is for between the WAN-edge devices and the V-Smart Controllers.

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Now just a little bit more about the V-Smart Controller itself.
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Now just a little bit more about the V-Smart Controller itself.

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First, this is a virtual machine, much like V-Manage.

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Technically it is supported on ESXi, which is VMware's Hypervisor, and KVM,

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which is

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a Linux-based hypervisor.

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Those are the ones that Cisco officially supports.

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Does that mean that you can't run this virtual machine on other virtualization

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platforms?

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Of course not, however, these are the ones that Cisco would actually support.
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Of course not, however, these are the ones that Cisco would actually support.

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Now of course, something as important as your V-Smart Controller is going to

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need some form

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of redundancy.

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And just to bring this up, because I hear it a lot, a lot of your virtual

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ization platforms,

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and I'm just going to use VMware vSphere here as an example.

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These various platforms usually have many different options for redundancy.

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VMware, for example, has fault tolerance and various other mechanisms that we
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VMware, for example, has fault tolerance and various other mechanisms that we

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can use

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to protect a virtual machine.

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And although you can do those things, Cisco still recommends running multiple V

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-Smart

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servers per domain.

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They actually recommend a minimum of three.

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You can support up to 20.

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I don't think you're probably going to need 20, however it is supported, you
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I don't think you're probably going to need 20, however it is supported, you

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can have up

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to 20 V-Smart Controllers.

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Now if you do have these redundant V-Smart Controllers, something needs to

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notify the

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other V-Smart Controllers that, well, other ones exist, because they're of

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course going

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to have to work as a, you could say, cluster or team.

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While the way that's done is we actually use V-Bond.

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V-Bond is going to notify the V-Smart about the other V-Smart in the domain.
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V-Bond is going to notify the V-Smart about the other V-Smart in the domain.

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They will then of course form tunnels between each other for exchanging

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information.

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V-Bond is also going to tell each V-Smart which, when edge devices, it should

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accept

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connections from.

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This way we can do some load sharing.

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If we have 20 V-Smart in our domain, we wouldn't want our WAN edge devices to

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form a tunnel

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to all 20 V-Smart.

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We want a large number of V-Smart not just for redundancy but also for load
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We want a large number of V-Smart not just for redundancy but also for load

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sharing.

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So we can also control which V-Smart are handling which WAN edge devices.

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Of course, in that environment, if any of the V-Smart Controllers were to fail,

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then the

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other controllers will simply keep the environment running seamlessly.

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Will simply fail over and start using one of the other V-Smart Controllers.

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So very redundant system and it has some inherent built-in load sharing.
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So very redundant system and it has some inherent built-in load sharing.

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So in this video, we jumped in and we got an introduction to our V-Smart

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controller, the

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brains of the entire SD WAN environment.

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Again, the V-Smart Controllers are what make up the control plane.

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What are they controlling?

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Well, they're controlling the WAN edge devices.

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How do they know how to control it?

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Well that's what's coming from V-Manage.

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So V-Manage is the management plane, tells the V-Smart Controllers what they
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So V-Manage is the management plane, tells the V-Smart Controllers what they

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need to do

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and then the V-Smart Controllers tell the WAN edge devices how to actually

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operate.

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And as we heard in this whole process, we can have redundant V-Smart Cont

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rollers, which

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again fairly important since this is a very large and important component.

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Now we can not only provide this for redundancy but also for load sharing and

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that's going

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to be handled by V-Bond.

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So next, let's jump in and take a more detailed look at the V-Bond server.
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So next, let's jump in and take a more detailed look at the V-Bond server.