VRF Overview

S- K- and 7100-Series devices have a single default router named “global”. The global router:

• Exists when you first boot the device
• Manages the VRFs for this physical router
• Can neither be created nor deleted
• Can manage up to 128 S or K-Series VRF instances and up to 16 7100-Series VRF instances, depending upon your system

Use the show limits application vrf command to determine the number of VRF instances your system supports.

Each optional VRF instance you create functions as its own routing domain. All routing features and protocols that are supported on the global router are also supported in a VRF instance. VRF instance router protocol configuration (for example, configuring PIM, OSPF, and IGMP) is identical to the global router protocol configuration. Protocol configurations in different VRFs do not conflict with each other because they are completely separate instances of the protocol.

You create a VRF router, in any command mode, using the set router vrf create command. The command requires that you specify a name of up to 31 printable characters, except for the space character. Extreme Networks recommends that you provide the VRF with a meaningful name such as “Marketing” or “Internet-Access”.

You can optionally specify an SNMPv3 context of up to 28 characters. If not specified, the SNMPv3 context defaults to the name of the VRF instance. If the VRF instance name exceeds 28 characters, the SNMPv3 context must be specified when creating the VRF. Refer to the set router vrf create command for information on creating a VRF instance.

The behavior when clearing the global router is different versus clearing a VRF instance. When you clear the global router, a blank configuration file is written to persistent memory. The global router is not deleted. Unlike the global router, all VRFs can be both created and deleted. When you clear a VRF, the VRF is deleted along with all of its configuration.

Use the clear router vrf command to clear the global router configuration or to delete a VRF instance from the system.

VRF Overview presents a router that has been segmented into three VRF routers: two VRF routers with user group access named Alpha-Group and Beta-Group, and a VRF for Internet access named Internet-Access.