MLS LABs - SDN LAB 

This Software Defined Networking (SDN) LAB is a miniaturized version of a modern Data Center deployment. It has multiple components in the Data, Control and Management Planes which are a combination of real and simulated nodes. These nodes include SDN Controller, Leaf Switches, Spine Switches, Compute Nodes, Out of Band Management Network, Data & in Band Management Network, inter switch links etc.

Leaf & Spine Switches form the Data Center Fabric (CLOS Topology) and can be used to configure the Underlay and Overlay network services. Both underlay and overlay BGP can be seen in action in the live nodes in this LAB. Also, both manual and SDN controlled configurations are supported in the fabric.

Control and Management of the entire DC network can be handled centrally by the SDN Controller component (Nuage VSD & Netconf Manager). It provides a web based graphical user interface (VSD Architect Web-GUI) to abstract the CLI configurations. The WEB-GUI connects to the SDN Controller back-end with REST-API calls and provides an easy to use "Click, Drag & Drop" operation alternative for creating L3-Overlay & L2-Overlay services across the CLOS Fabric. Such graphically provisioned services automatically translate into network configuration and provide connectivity to the tenant applications hosted in the Data Center.

Linux machines connected under the Leaf Switches function as the Compute Hosts/hypervisors & can be used to run applications (like simple HTTP Server and Clients) to verify the deployed Network Service Connectivity.