Routing Protocols used in Data centers and advantage/disadv of OSPF (Link State) with BGP

• Routing Protocols used in Data centers and advantage/disadv of OSPF (Link State) with BGP:

• Oversubscription:

• Spine Layer must have 1:1 Oversubscription ratio since it becomes non-blocking
• Leaf Layer can have x:1 oversubscription Ratio since one leaf is connected to all the Spines
• NOTE: Oversubscription at the leaf node is controlled by maintaining a ratio of uplinks to downlinks. A 2:1 oversubscription ratio would imply that twice as many ports are used for servers(downlink) than for uplinks.

• Network Design Considerations: The number of spine nodes required for a given design will depend on a few factors including:

• Number of Compute/Storage Racks: All leaf uplinks must be accommodated by the spine nodes depending on the oversubscription ratio at the leaf. For eg, if leaf has 3:1 ratio , then, for 64-port leaf device, 16 links will be uplink and 48 will be connected to servers
• Controlling Fault Domains: Provisions must be made to contain control plane failures to minimize impact on capacity as well as prevent the spread of control plane poisoning.

• Network Protocol Considerations:

• OSPF (Link State IGP):

• Since OSPF generates link state updates for a single event which must be flooded to all the neighbors, the devices must have powerful control plane processors
• Single Pass Spine: it is critical that no single leaf node shall be a transit path for any other leaf node. A link-state IGP can infact introduce momentary leaf-transit scenarios during protocol state-transitions. Such transitive traffic patterns temporarily disrupt our pre- defined oversubscription ratios and can be very hard to characterize given how short-lived these events may be.
• Unnecessary N-Way Routes: Each spine node will have a direct point-to-point interfaces to each leaf node. We expect adjacencies to be established between each spine node and every leaf node. Now consider a scenario where ospf adjacency has not yet been established between spine-1 and leaf-1 or we have a faulty cable between these devices. In this state, spine-1 learns about leaf-1’s host network through every other leaf node.EOS offers a ‘maximum-paths’ feature to limit the number of n-way IGP routes that get installed on a spine device. In smaller deployments where a link-state IGP is adequate, this feature can be used. However, we can prevent n-way routes from being installed altogether by considering an alternative design and routing protocol.

• BGP:

• Consider a design where the spine nodes are configured to be in a single BGP autonomous system while each leaf-node is assigned a unique AS number. The private AS range of 64512-65535 is available for such designs allowing for upto 1023 AS numbers to be assigned within a single pod.
• This approach addresses many of the undesirable side-effects seen in a typical link-state environments. In particular, BGP’s built-in loop suppression capabilities prevent unnecessary control plane churn. With this design, we are able to create a ‘single-pass’ spine, eliminate unnecessary n-way routes and significantly reduce the amount of control plane traffic that would otherwise result when nodes are rebooted or upgraded.
• Also, in BGP, the control plane activity is contant whereas in OSPF there is high control plane activity during link state changes

• Conclusion:

• EOS platforms have powerful control plane architectures and can support both OSPF and BGP topologies very effectively. Although EOS has incorporated additional features to support large OSPF CLOS designs, BGP is better suited to handle large ECMP designs with it’s native loop-suppression and policy framework.