Recommendations

The 3‑Stage EVPN-VXLAN Fabric with Apstra Data Center Director validated design follows an industry‑standard ERB (Edge‑Routed Bridging) design. This validated design serves as a base reference architecture for provisioning a three‑stage data center fabric with an IPv6 underlay. Although there are minimal differences between IPv4 and IPv6 underlays in terms of functionality and configuration, it is recommended to ensure that the switches used in a three‑stage data center fabric with an IPv6 underlay support the key features and capabilities described in this validated design.

Apstra reduces network complexity by automating configuration deployment across the fabric. The IPv6 neighbor discovery (also known as BGP auto‑discovery/unnumbered) are handled automatically by Apstra without need for any Junos OS configuration as is described in Appendix A – BGP unnumbered with IPv6, enabling faster and more reliable data center fabric deployments.

With Apstra version 6.2, critical new features such as Multiple MAC-VRF (switching zone) with service type VLAN-Aware and VLAN-Bundle and overlapping VLAN are natively supported by Apstra. Apstra uses the service provider style configuration to natively support vlan translation. To support multi-tenancy and overlapping VLANs, Apstra utilizes service provider style Junos OS Implicit VLAN Normalization configuration to simplify VLAN translation configuration for Juniper devices.

The recommended Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved versions are 25.2X100-D30 and 25.2R2.

The HPE Juniper Networking hardware listed in Table 8 : Devices Under Test (DUT) have been validated to support an IPv6 underlay with EVPN‑VXLAN in the roles specified in this validated design. This validated design will be updated as further HPE Juniper Networking platforms and capabilities are validated.