EFA Microservices

EFA consists of core K3s containerized microservices that interact with each other and with other infrastructure services to provide the core functions of fabric and tenant network automation.

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Microservices in the EFA architecture
EFA microservices are K3s containerized services

Fabric Service

The Fabric Service is responsible for automating the fabric BGP underlay and EVPN overlay. By default, the EVPN overlay is enabled but you can disable it before provisioning, if necessary. The Fabric Service exposes the CLI and REST API for automating the fabric underlay and overlay configuration.

The Fabric Service features include:
  • Support for small data centers (non-Clos)
  • Support for 3-stage and 5-stage Clos fabrics
  • Support for MCT 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.

Tenant Service

The Tenant Service manages tenants, tenant networks, and endpoints, fully leveraging the knowledge of assets and the underlying fabric. You can use the CLI and REST API for tenant network configuration on Clos and non-Clos fabrics.

Tenant network configuration includes VLAN, BD, VE, EVPN, VTEP, VRF, and router BGP configuration on fabric devices to provide Layer 2 extension, Layer 3 extension across the fabric, Layer 2 hand-off, and Layer 3 hand-off at the edge of the fabric.

Inventory Service

The Inventory Service acts as an inventory of all the necessary physical and logical assets of the fabric devices. All other EFA services rely on asset data for their configuration automation. The Inventory Service is a REST layer on top of device inventory details, with the capability to filter data based on certain fields. The Inventory Service securely stores the credentials of devices in encrypted form and makes those credentials available to different components such as the Fabric and Tenant services.

The Inventory Service supports the execute-cli option for pushing configuration and exec commands to devices. Examples include configuring SNMP parameters or OSPF configurations. This means you can use EFA for SLX-OS commands and push the same configuration to multiple devices.

The Asset Service provides the secure credential store and deep discovery of physical and logical assets of the managed devices. The service publishes the Asset refresh and change events to other services.

Notification Service

The Notification Service sends events, alerts, and tasks to external entities. Notifications sent from EFA are derived from the syslog events received from the devices that EFA manages. Alerts are notifications that services in EFA send for unexpected conditions. Tasks are user-driven operations or timer-based tasks such as device registration or fabric creation.

RASlog Service

The RASlog Service processes syslog messages from devices and forwards notifications to subscribers. For more information, see RASlog Service in the Extreme Fabric Automation Administration Guide, 2.4.0.

Security Service

The Security Service consists of authentication and authorization features that enforce a security boundary between northbound clients and downstream operations between EFA and SLX devices. The service also validates users and their credentials through Role-based Access Control (RBAC) and supports local and remote (LDAP) login.

SNMP Service

The SNMP Service processes SNMP traps from devices and forwards notifications to subscribers. For more information, see EFA as SNMP Proxy in the Extreme Fabric Automation Administration Guide, 2.4.0..

Ecosystem Integration Services

EFA provides one-touch integration with these ecosystems, providing deep insight into VMs, vSwitches, port groups, and hosts, and the translation of these into IP fabric networking constructs.

VMware vCenter Service
The vCenter integration provides connectivity between EFA and vCenter using a REST API. EFA does not connect to individual ESXi servers. All integration is done through vCenter. For more information, see the Extreme Fabric Automation vCenter Integration Guide, 2.4.0. Integration support includes the following:
  • Registration or deregistration of one or more vCenter servers in EFA
  • Updates for vCenter asset details
  • Lists of information about vCenter servers
  • Inventory integration
  • Dynamic updates about Tenant Service integration from vCenter and from EFA services
Hyper-V
The Hyper-V integration supports networking configuration for Hyper-V servers in a datacenter, manual and automated configuration updates when VMs move, and visibility into the VMs and networking resources that are deployed in the Hyper-V setup. For more information, see Extreme Fabric Automation Hyper-V Integration Guide, 2.4.0. Integration support includes the following:
  • SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) server discovery
  • SCVMM server update
  • Periodic polling of registered SCVMM servers
  • SCVMM server list
  • SCVMM server delete and deregister
  • Network event handling
OpenStack Service
The OpenStack service integrates Extreme OpenStack plug-ins with the rest of the EFA foundation services in an IP fabric. For more information, see the Extreme Fabric Automation OpenStack Integration Guide, 2.4.0. Integration support includes the following:
  • Create, read, update, delete (CRUD) operations on networks and ports
  • LAG support
  • Provider network (default, PT)
  • VLAN trunking
  • Network operations using single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), physical and virtual functions
  • vMotion (virtual machine migration)
  • ML2 driver with support for:
    • Network and segment provisoning for non-default physnets
    • DC-owner-based l2 extension for DC gateway
  • Topology changes for port-based extension of DC gateway addition and deletion of topology entries and its changes on EFA EPGs
  • Single-homed connections to the edge port
  • Multi-segment support
  • Journaling support for L2 and L3
  • L3 service plugin:
    • Routing feature support using VRF
    • Flavor (service provider) support
    • Centralized routing
    • IPv6 support (dual stack)
  • Layer 3 flavors
  • Neighbor Discovery and Router Advertisement support:
    • IPv6 ND MTU support
    • IPv6 No-Autoconfig support