HPE Juniper Networking Hardware and Software Components
For this solution, the Juniper products and software versions are the following.
The design documented in this validated design is considered the baseline representation for the solution. As part of a complete solutions suite, we routinely swap hardware devices with other models during iterative use case testing. Each switch platform validated in this document goes through the same rigorous role-based testing using specified versions of Junos OS and Apstra software.
HPE Juniper Networking Hardware Components
The following switches are tested and validated to work with the 3-Stage Fabric with Apstra Data Center Director in the following roles:
Table 2: Telco Cloud Service Provider Devices and Positioning
| Server Leaf Switches | Border Leaf Switches | Spine | Offramp Routers | Bare Metal Servers (SR-IOV and JCNR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QFX5130-48C | QFX5130-32CD | QFX5230-64CD | PTX10002-36QDD | HPE DL360 Gen DELL PowerEdge R750 |
Table 3: HPE Juniper Networking Software and Version
| HPE Juniper Networking Products | Software or Image Version |
|---|---|
| Apstra Data Center Director | 6.2 |
| Juniper OS Evolved (QFX) | 25.2X100-D30 |
| Juniper OS Evolved (PTX) | 25.4R1-S1 |
| JCNR | 25.2 |
Note: JCNR is installed on the Kubernetes Worker pods after the HELM Chart is installed. An appropriate license must be installed for the JCNR cRPD pod to be in running state, otherwise it enters CrashLoopBackOff state. To procure the license, contact your HPE Juniper Account team.
Table 4: Pre-requisite Compute Software Configured for the Validated Design
| Software Name | Software or Image Version |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu | 22.04.4 LTS |
| Kubernetes (K9s) Client Version | v1.35.1 |
| Kustomize Version | v5.7.1 |
| Kubernetes Server Version | v1.35.1 |
| Python | 3.12 |
| Multus CNI | https://github.com/k8snetworkplumbingwg/multus-cni.git |
| HELM Chart | curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 |
Note: GIT must be installed after the Ubuntu server is upgraded to 22.04.4. Also,, there may be more packages required, which can be installed separately as needed, see Compute Install and Deployment of Ubuntu Operating System, Kubernetes.
Feature Validation
The 3-Stage SP Telco Data Center Fabric is validated for the following baseline features:
Table 5: Apstra Intent Based DC Reference
| CATEGORY | FEATURES | HPE Juniper Networking Standard Document Link |
|---|---|---|
| Bridged Overlay with IPv6 Underlay | IPv6 underlay [ Apstra 6.1 provides IPv6 assignment and BGP configuration; hence BGP unnumbered is not included] | Bridged Overlay Design and Implementation |
| Crb-proxy-mac on Leaf Switches in Bridge Overlay Fabric with Spines as Junos OS Evolved | With crb-proxy-mac command leaf devices are responsible to refresh ARP entries using the configured MAC address. Here MAC address can be any unused MAC address. After leaf device receives ARP reply, it sends BGP EVPN type 2 route towards the Spine so the ARP knowledge can be refreshed on the Spine device. | crb-proxy-mac |
| EVPN Instance Type (MAC-VRF) | MAC-VRF is an Ethernet VPN (EVPN) instance type that provides layer 2 multitenancy by creating dedicated MAC address forwarding tables per tenant VLAN-aware as Apstra provisions both VLAN-AWARE and VLAN-Bundle. MAC-VRF is also configured for VLAN isolation which is a hardware-agnostic mechanism to support overlapping VLAN IDs across tenants. |
MAC-VRF Routing Instance Type Overview |
| Underlay EBGP | Underlay IPv6 eBGP Peering session | Configure Interfaces and EBGP as the Routing Protocol in the IPv6 Fabric Underlay |
| Overlay EBGP | Overlay IPv6 eBGP Peering session | Configure EBGP for IPv6 Overlay Peering |
| Load Balancing | ECMP with EBGP session | Understanding BGP Multipath |
| Single Homing and Multi-homing | ESI-LAG for single and Multi-homed (Active-Active). | Understanding EVPN Multihoming Concepts |
| EVPN Multihoming Designated Forwarder Election | When deploying Active-Standby EVPN multi-homing, by default EVPN runs modulo calculation for individual VLAN/EVI. But by using per-ESI, it resolves some operational problems during failover in an Active-Standby setup. The QFX5K series devices only support port-based DF elections and not the DF election per EVI per ESI procedure. |
EVPN Multihoming Designated Forwarder Election |