I’m often getting the same question when delivering online courses or webinars focused on data center fabrics or cloud infrastructure:

Is it possible to build a redundant layer-3-only fabric with no VLANs stretched across multi switches, and use X (for example, VMware NSX) on such a fabric?

In this document, we’ll explore the problem and identify three potential solutions:

• Servers and applications using multiple IP addresses from different subnets;
• Routing on servers (and applications using loopback addresses);
• Fabric-based workarounds.

The second part of the document describes the current state of real-life products, including VMware NSX for vSphere.

More Information

If you’re building a cloud infrastructure, explore the webinars from the Cloud Infrastructure and SDDC series, in particular the Designing Cloud Infrastructure and Designing Active-Active and Disaster Recovery Data Centers.

If you’re building a data center fabric, start with the Leaf-and-Spine Fabric Architectures and Designs webinar and use the information from Data Center Fabric Architectures webinar when selecting vendors and equipment.

You get all the above webinars with the ipSpace.net subscription… and if you think you might need an additional online consulting session to select the right technology or validate your design, buy professional or team subscription.