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To really appreciate the concept of the idea of VRF light and what it brings to

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the table,

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let's first take a look at what we have built so far during this course.

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Currently, we have an

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external gateway. We have an external segment that's on the VLAN 23 with the IP

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address base of 23.1.2.

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At our tier 0 gateway, we're using .61 and .62 for edge 1 and edge 2

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respectively.

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We also have a virtual IP address of .60 here on this 23.1.2 network. And then

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below our tier 0
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below our tier 0

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gateway, we have inter router connections down to our tier 1 gateway A here and

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tier 1 gateway B

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here. And then connected to each of those, we have an overlay segment with

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segment 10,

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supporting the 10-10 address base and segment 20, supporting the 10-20 address

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base. And then

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behind the scenes, here is our infrastructure regarding our transport nodes,

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both host transport

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nodes, host A and B, and our edge transport nodes, edge 1 and edge 2. So

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everything we've built so far

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is functional, it works. However, what if we are a provider and we have a

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couple of different
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couple of different

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customers? So let's imagine we have customer 1 and we have customer 2. Now it's

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very possible

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for each of those customers, they're going to want to have their own networks.

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For example,

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customer 1 may want to have down here a 10.10 network and customer 2 also may

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want to have a

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10.10 network. And each customer may want to have a 10.20 as well, IP address

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base and so

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forth and so on. And because they're separate customers, they should be able to

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have their own

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sets of routes that they're using in their environment. So over here customer 1

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may have a

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T1 router, customer 2 has a T1 router, and then customer 1 has a T0 router,
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T1 router, customer 2 has a T1 router, and then customer 1 has a T0 router,

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customer 2 has a T0

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router. However, once again, we need to keep all the routes for customer 1

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separate from the routes

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for customer 2 because they're overlapping IP address bases and also customer 1

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doesn't need

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access to any of customer 2 stuff and vice versa. So how do we do that? How do

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we take our NSX

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environment and logically chunk it up into subsections or sub routing

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environments? And the answer is

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VRF Lite. And VRF stands for virtual routing and forwarding. And here's a great
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VRF Lite. And VRF stands for virtual routing and forwarding. And here's a great

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way to help

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understand how VRF works. Let's imagine we have a single router. So this

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represents a router

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and inside that router perhaps has dozens of routes. And by default, most

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routers can keep all those

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routes and what's known as the default or the global routing table. However, if

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we have multiple

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customers and they need to keep track of their own routes, if we had a single

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router to do that,

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what we could do is carve it up using VRF virtual routing and forwarding. So

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let's imagine customer

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1 will just take a little chunk out of here. So that'll be customer 1 and blue,
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1 will just take a little chunk out of here. So that'll be customer 1 and blue,

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and we'll take

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another section of this router and we'll set it up for routes for customer 2.

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If we had to get a

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third customer, we could carve up another VRF as part of the routing

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information on this router,

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and we can have that for customer 3. And that way, in this example, we could

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use one single router,

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but by using VRF's virtual routing and forwarding instances, we can carve up

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subsections like little

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mini-me portions of that router for one of the customer specific routes. So in

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that case, the

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1010 network here for customer 1 would be in this VRF, the one here in blue.
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1010 network here for customer 1 would be in this VRF, the one here in blue.

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And this subnet

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1010 here for customer 2 would be in this VRF, and they wouldn't be part of the

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same global

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routing table. So think of it like little slices of the routing environment

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that are set aside and

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dedicated and isolated for an individual customer. So now that we've taken a

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look at this logical

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concept called virtual routing and forwarding, where we carve up portions of

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the route tables for

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individual customers, how do we apply that concept here in our network topology

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with NSX?

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And here's how we're going to pull that off. We're going to start off by

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implementing a tier 0
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implementing a tier 0

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gateway, just a normal tier 0 gateway. And then we're going to subdivide that

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tier 0 gateway into

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logical VRFs. So in this example here in our tier 0 gateway, we're going to

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carve off part of that

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for customer blue, and we'll carve off another piece here for customer green.

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And the way we do

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that after we have our tier 0 gateway, we go in and we simply create additional

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tier 0 gateways,

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but instead of saying tier 0 gateway from the dropdown, we specify that we want

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to create a VRF.

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And then we create that VRF, which is a sub component of the tier 0 gateway. So
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And then we create that VRF, which is a sub component of the tier 0 gateway. So

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with the tier 0 gateway

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in place, we create one VRF for blue, one VRF for green. And again, these would

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each represent a

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customer that we're supporting. And then below that tier 0 VRF, if we want to,

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we can add a tier 1

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gateway that's associated with that VRF. And the same thing over here on the

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green side, we can

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create a tier 1 gateway for green, associate it with the green VRF. And then

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anything below that

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is going to be associated with that VRF here up on the tier 0 gateway. And then

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we follow the same

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process down on both sides. We can create segments, associate them with the
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process down on both sides. We can create segments, associate them with the

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tier 1 gateways. So this

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10, 10 network over here is associated with the tier 1 gateway for the VRF blue

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, while this 10,

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10 network over here with the same IP addressing space, isn't a problem because

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it's associated

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with the VRF green, because this segment is connected to the green tier 1

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gateway, which is

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connected to the green VRF, which is being contained in this little section

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right here

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of the router. Think of it again, like a little subsection of the tier 0

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gateway associated for
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gateway associated for

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a specific customer, or sometimes referred to as a specific tenant. So that my

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friend is the concept

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of using VRF light in an NSX environment. Now another question I like to answer

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here in this

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overview is why is it called light? Well, some other vendors have solutions

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where they're using

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VRFs. And one of those is called MPLS VPNs. And behind the scenes uses multi

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protocol label switching

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and VRFs in combination with border gateway protocol. It's a wonderful,

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wonderful thing. However,

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if we're using the compartmentalization of the routing table here on our tier 0
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if we're using the compartmentalization of the routing table here on our tier 0

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gateway,

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and we're not using it in combination with MPLS. And that's where the term

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light comes in. We're

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not using it in combination with MPLS or MPLS VPNs. We're simply using the VRF

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functionality here

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in NSX to carve up logical subsections for individual tenants or individual

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customers to keep all the

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routes. In this case, for blue, separate from the routes for green. And so one

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of the best ways of

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really appreciating this and also a really great way to reinforce the concepts

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up to this point in

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the course is to go ahead and implement and verify VRF light in an NSX
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the course is to go ahead and implement and verify VRF light in an NSX

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environment.