Re: wan bridging, routing and multi tenancy

wvwavere01 · ‎10-26-2010

I have a question around design of the following, if this is the wrong place to ask please let me know, but here goes:

We have a requirement to do layer2 bridging on wan links, and also have routing on the same links.

The reasons for this is the nature of our business. We provide DR solutions to customers that require us to manage offsite backups [this is the routing part] where we have a server in our datacenter that would connect to the customer server on private addresses and replicate data back to it.

In the event of a failure of cutomer server/datacenter, we can bring up a copy of their server in our datacenter, bridge it over a wan link back into their network on original addresses.

Obviously there are some address overlap issues that we have to address at our end for customers with overlapping addresses. At the moment this is a very 'ugly' process.

So my question is: Can I do this with Cisco gear, will it be a better alternative to opensource products[what we are using at the moment] and it will also have to fit into a tight budget.

Any advise will be appreciated

Jon Marshall · ‎10-27-2010

wvwavere01 wrote:
I have a question around design of the following, if this is the wrong place to ask please let me know, but here goes:
We have a requirement to do layer2 bridging on wan links, and also have routing on the same links.
The reasons for this is the nature of our business. We provide DR solutions to customers that require us to manage offsite backups [this is the routing part] where we have a server in our datacenter that would connect to the customer server on private addresses and replicate data back to it.
In the event of a failure of cutomer server/datacenter, we can bring up a copy of their server in our datacenter, bridge it over a wan link back into their network on original addresses.
Obviously there are some address overlap issues that we have to address at our end for customers with overlapping addresses. At the moment this is a very 'ugly' process.
So my question is: Can I do this with Cisco gear, will it be a better alternative to opensource products[what we are using at the moment] and it will also have to fit into a tight budget.
Any advise will be appreciated

Depends on what terminates your WAN links. L2TPv3 will allow you to extend a L2 vlan across a L3 routed network but it is really only supported on routers (not sure about 6500s) -

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/customer/docs/ios/12_3t/12_3t2/feature/guide/gtl2tpv3.html

What devices are you using ?

Jon

wvwavere01 · ‎10-27-2010

Well, at the moment the setup is so that we have a small opensource device at the customer site. We have the service provider link that then terminates on a 2960 at our datacenter, that then goes to sub-interfaces on a ASA and then sends it of to another opensource device that does the l2 and l3 connections back to the customer sites. Everytime we get a address overlap, we set up a new opensource Server at our end.

So I was tinking that there must be a better way to do this.

The devises we put out at customer sites cost us about $400 each, and standing up a new opensource vm is pretty much free.

If I want to replace this solution with cisco gear I would hav eto jsutify all the costs, so would like to keep to small/medium business kind of gear. a 6500 will probably be out of the question for what I can spend.