AN-006 High-availability bonds using dynamic routing¶

This document outlines how to set up bonds in a High-Availability (HA) configuration using dynamic routing. The bonds will be configured with private connected IPs in order to establish a dynamic routing protocol with customer equipment on premise.

Rather than defining the connected IPs and routes on the bond as in a traditional bonding setup, they will be configured on the customer equipment and dynamically routed from the customer’s network, through the bonds to the aggregators, and into the datacenter network. While either OSPF or BGP may be used between the customer equipment and the bonder, and between the aggregators and the datacenter network, this document will use OSPF.

As an example, this document will assume the customer network is 203.0.113.0/30.

Prerequisites¶

All involved nodes (bonds and aggregators) must be running 6.5 or later.
A router or switch behind the bonders, capable of OSPF/BGP.
Source address verification must be disabled on each bond (this is the default for new bonds).
Private WAN must be disabled on the space. A future application note will describe how to set up HA in this manner for private WAN spaces.
Dynamic routing configured between the aggregators and datacenter network.

Note

Dynamic routing on the aggregator using quagga is not supported. You must configure configure dynamic routing in bonding instead.

Setup¶

Bonds¶

Create two bonds: one master and one backup. Each bond can have its own aggregator, bond settings, and legs, although in practice those settings will be the same. The bonders can share the same Internet lines for each of their legs.

Connected IPs¶

Create a private network used to communicate between the bonders and the router/switch. For the purposes of this document, 192.168.66.0/29 is chosen. IPs are assigned from this network as follows:

192.168.66.1/29: on-premise router/switch
192.168.66.2/29: master bond
192.168.66.3/29: backup bond

Other required information¶

You will need to take note of the following information from the bond details page of your HA bond pair:

The master bond’s tunnel subnet, found on the bond details page (e.g., 172.30.0.0/31). The first IP is the bonder’s tunnel IP (e.g., 172.30.0.0), and the second IP is the aggregator’s tunnel IP (e.g., 172.30.0.1).
The backup bond’s tunnel subnet, found in the same manner (e.g., 172.30.0.2/31)

Filtering¶

It’s very important that route filtering is configured on the aggregators to prevent customer-defined routes from unexpectedly being propagated into the datacentre network.

Warning

Without restrictive filtering, nefarious routes could be injected into your core network from the customer premises!

Aggregator filter¶

The following filter should be defined on the aggregator, which will only import the expected 203.0.113.0/30 route and reject anything else.

Import filter¶

Name: HA bond 01 import filter
Add a rule:
- Description: Import 203.0.113.0/30
- Add a match:
  - Attribute: Network
  - Add a value:
    - Value 1: 203.0.113.0/30
- Add an action:
  - Action: Accept
Add a rule:
- Description: Reject everything else
- Add an action:
  - Action: Reject

Bond filter¶

As the aggregator filter is restrictive on what it imports from the bonds, filtering is not strictly required on the bonders. However, it is recommended to filter routes being imported from the customer device to avoid any unexpected routes from entering the bond’s routing tables.

Bond protocols¶

Starting with the master bond, add the following protocols.

Note

The customer router/switch must be configured to prefer routes via the master bonder. In OSPF, this is achieved by adding a higher cost to the OSPF interface connected to the backup bonder. You may also use the same interface and instead use separate OSPF instance IDs.

OSPF¶

Name: Customer OSPF
Protocol: OSPF
Add an area:
- Area ID: 0.0.0.0
- Add an interface:
  - Add an interface link:
    - Link 1: eth0

BGP¶

Name: BGP to aggregator
Protocol: BGP
IPv4 import: None
IPv4 export: All
IPv6 import: None
IPv6 export: None
Local:
- IP: 172.30.0.0
- AS number: 65536
Neighbor:
- IP: 172.30.0.1
- AS number: 65536
IPv4:
- Self Next Hop: Yes
General:
- Direct: Yes
- Hold time: 10
- Startup hold time: 10
- Connect delay: 2
- Connect retry: 2
- Error wait time min: 5
- Error wait time length: 30

Next, configure these same protocols on the backup bond, but with the following important change, using the backup bond’s tunnel subnet (172.30.0.2/31 in this example):

Local:
- IP: 172.30.0.2
Neighbor:
- IP: 172.30.0.3

Aggregator protocol¶

The next step is to configure the converse of the BGP protocols on the aggregators. Note that only one protocol is required on each aggregator as the tunnel subnet is used for the IP range.

Name: BGP to master bond
Protocol: BGP
IPv4 import: Filter
Filter: HA bond 01 import filter
IPv4 export: None
IPv6 import: None
IPv6 export: None
Local:
- AS number: 65536
Neighbor:
- IP range: 172.30.0.0/16
- AS number: 65536
General:
- Direct: Yes
- Hold time: 10
- Startup hold time: 10
- Connect delay: 2
- Connect retry: 2
- Error wait time min: 5
- Error wait time length: 30

At this point, the routing should be working and the core should have a route for the 203.0.113.0/30 network.

Security¶

As configured above, the aggregator will only accept BGP connections from the 172.30.0.0/16 tunnel network, but any bonds hosted on the aggregator could configure a BGP protocol and connect. For added security, you can configure MD5 authentication and TTL security on the bond and aggregator BGP protocols.

Testing¶

This document is meant to outline how HA could be achieved with a pair of bonds and the dynamic routing functionality introduced in 6.5, but may not account for every failure case. It is strongly recommended that any HA implementations are extensively tested in a lab environment prior to deploying them to production sites.