Cisco APIC Layer 3 Networking Configuration Guide, Release 6.2(x)

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Cisco APIC Layer 3 Networking Configuration Guide, Release 6.2(x)

External bridge domain profile guidelines and limitations

Updated: April 17, 2026

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Lists the operational constraints, compatibility requirements, and downgrade behavior for external bridge domain profiles that group SVIs with different access encapsulations.

Review these guidelines and limitations before you configure an external bridge domain profile.

  • The external device or hypervisor must block Layer 2 loops. A loop can occur when an external switch relies on Spanning Tree Protocol to prevent loops.

  • When you configure an external bridge domain profile for an SVI, the system deletes and re-creates the SVI.

  • An external bridge domain profile is scoped to an L3Out. On a node, you cannot map two different access encapsulations to the same external bridge domain profile.

  • Bridge domain grouping does not support the ctx encapsulation scope, which corresponds to the VRF option in the Cisco APIC GUI.

  • Grouped SVIs with different access encapsulations cannot share a node.

  • If you downgrade from release 5.2(3) to an earlier release that does not support multiple encapsulations for L3Out SVIs, the system makes these changes to an L3Out configured with multiple encapsulations, an external bridge domain profile, or both:

    • Deletes the l3extBdProfileEncapAllocator managed object that allocates multiple encapsulations.

    • Deletes all l3extBdProfile managed objects.

    • Deletes all l3extBdProfileCont managed objects.

    • Deletes all l3extRsBdProfile managed objects.