Support for 20,000 Routers

Release 26.1.x introduces updated computing resource recommendations for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Control components. The specifications support Industrial IoT deployments with up to 20,000 devices, which ensures stability, high availability, and optimal performance across the control plane.

These tables outline the instance type definitions, component resource recommendations, and testbed specifications.

Table 1. Instance type definitions

Instance type

Specifications (Approximation)

Qualified Instance Type

vCPUs*

RAM*

Storage Size*

Azure

AWS

Large

32

128 GB

5 TB

Not qualified

Not qualified

*vCPU, RAM, and Storage Size values are per Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager.

Table 2. Instance types with number of devices, nodes and deployment models

Devices

Nodes and Deployment Models with Instance Type

Data Processing Factor

Number of days the data can be stored

Max Daily Processing Volume

Cisco Cloud

On-Prem (UCS)

Customer Cloud

20000

A six-node large Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager cluster (with three nodes running ConfigDB), where all nodes serve as messaging server, statistics processor, and AppServer

100 GB per day

14

500 GB per day*

Not Qualified

Yes

Not Qualified
Table 3. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN validator recommended computing resources

Devices

Number of Cisco SD-WAN Validators

vCPU

RAM

OS Volume

vNICs

Azure

AWS

20000

6

4

8 GB

20 GB

2 (one for the tunnel interface and one for management)

Not qualified

Not qualified
Table 4. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN controller recommended computing resources

Devices

Number of Cisco SD-WAN Controllers

vCPU

RAM

OS Volume

vNICs

Azure

AWS

20000

16

8

16 GB

20 GB

2 (one for tunnel interface, one for management)

Not qualified

Not qualified
Table 5. UCS specifications

Hardware SKU

Specifications

UCSC-C240-M5SX

UCS C240 M5 24 SFF + 2 rear drives without CPU, memory cards, hard disk, PCIe, and PS.

UCS-MR-X16G1RT-H

16GB DDR4-2933-MHz RDIMM/1Rx4/1.2v

UCS-CPU-I6248R

Intel 6248R 3GHz/205W 24C/35.75MB DDR4 2933MHz

Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6330N CPU @ 2.20GHz

UCS-SD16T123X-EP

1.6TB 2.5in Enterprise Performance 12G SAS SSD (3X endurance)

Note

  • Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controllers are supported on UCS platforms (fifth generation, sixth generation, and later) that meet or exceed the specified hardware, enabling similar scale numbers.

  • Both AMD and Intel CPUs support the specified UCS specifications.
Figure 1. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN test bed topology diagram for 20,000 devices

Considerations for topology testing

  • The test bed features a vManage cluster with 6 nodes, 16 controllers, and 4 validators.

  • There are 20,000 devices, divided evenly among the East, West, North, and South zones.

  • Each zone uses c8kv devices as hubs.

  • In each zone, 5,000 devices connect to these hubs, forming a Hub and Spoke topology with a single TLOC.

Key performance and scale metrics

  1. vManage/Controllers/Validators stability, High Availability, and characterization.

  2. UI characterization.

  3. Bulk API with concurrent sessions (tested for various API calls).

  4. DPI traffic for 20,000 cEdge devices with aggregated daily traffic up to 500 GB.

  5. Configuration scale up to 6000 lines.

  6. Policy scale up to 32,000 on 16 vSmarts.

  7. OMP Routes up to 250,000.

  8. BFD flap on 1000 devices and alarm updates on vManage.


Note

  • Multi-tenant scale testing is not supported.

  • Controller stability, High Availability, API response time, and UI performance are validated for up to 20,000 devices, consistent with enterprise-level testing.

  • Points 4, 5, 6, and 7 (from the "Key performance and scale metrics" section) specifically address IIoT requirements.