EFA features allow you to orchestrate the automation of Fabric infrastructure, the Tenant Services life-cycle management of 3- and 5-stage IP Clos DC Fabrics, and the automation of Small Data Center Fabric topology.
Fabric Service is responsible for automating the Fabric BGP underlay and EVPN overlay. By default, the EVPN overlay is enabled but can be disabled before provisioning if desired. Fabric Service exposes the CLI and REST API to clients for automating the Fabric underlay and overlay configuration.
Underlay automation includes Interface Configurations (IP Numbered), BGP Underlay for Spine and Leaf, BFD, and MCT configurations. Overlay automation includes EVPN and Overlay Gateway configuration. Fabric Service is deployed with Inventory Service and Tenant Service.
Tenant Service exposes the CLI and REST API for automating the tenant network configuration on the Clos and Non-CLOS fabric. Tenant network configuration includes VLAN, BD, VE, EVPN, VTEP, VRF, and Router BGP configuration on the necessary Fabric devices in order to provide Layer 2-extension and Layer 3-extension across the Fabric.
Inventory Service is a REST layer on top of device inventory details, with the capability to filter data based on certain fields. Inventory Service will also securely store credentials of devices in encrypted form and make it available to different components like Fabric Service and Tenant Service.
Inventory Service supports the execute-cli option for pushing configuration commands that are not
included in the EFA CLI to devices. Examples include configuring SNMP parameters or
OSPF configurations. This provides the ability to use EFA for any SLX-OS command,
and as well as push the same configuration to multiple devices.
TPVM (Third-Party Virtual Machine) is a guest VM that resides on Extreme SLX devices. You can run EFA 2.1.0 from the SLX 9150 or SLX 9250 TPVM. In this context, EFA leverages the K3S Kubernetes cluster as an underlying infrastructure for the EFA services deployment. The K3S cluster is a single instance and an important component for supporting high availability. A maximum of 24 devices is supported. These can be 24 devices in a single fabric or 24 devices across multiple fabrics.
EFA can be deployed on an external Virtual Machine when support for more than 24 devices is required. It may also be desirable based on the preference of where tools are deployed within the Data Center. Running EFA on the TPVM or an external VM provides added deployment flexibility.
You can fully or partially migrate the fabric being configured through the use of the SLX CLI or out-of-band means, provided there are no conflicts with EFA fabric settings. Fabric Service learns and fetches the configuration on the devices through the Inventory Service, performs pre-validation checks, and generates appropriate errors for deviations in the configuration.
Brownfield scenarios are not supported for Tenant Services.