Service chaining in Cisco SD-WAN
Service chaining in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a centralized orchestration capability that
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advertises available services using OMP service routes with defined service identifiers.
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steers traffic through services by modifying OMP next-hop, TLOC, and labels via policy.
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tracks service availability to prevent routing traffic to unavailable service devices.
Services in the network
Services such as firewall, load balancer, and intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) often run within a virtualized environment and may physically be centralized in one location or in several locations for redundancy. Services may be internal, cloud based, or external subscriptions. Networks must reroute traffic from any location in the network through such services.
Customers want the ability to internally spawn or externally subscribe to new services on demand for capacity, redundancy, or to select best-of-breed technologies.
For example, if a firewall site exceeds its capacity, a customer can spawn a new firewall service at a new location. Supporting this new firewall requires the configuration of policy-based, weighted load distribution to multiple firewalls.
Reasons to reroute traffic through services
Traffic flow from a less secure region of a network must pass through a service, such as a firewall, or through a chain of services to ensure that it has not been tampered with.
In a network that consists of multiple VPNs, each representing a function or an organization, traffic between VPNs must traverse a service, such as a firewall, or a chain of services.
In a campus, interdepartmental traffic might go through a firewall, while intradepartmental traffic might be routed directly. Certain traffic flows must traverse a service, such as a load balancer.
Today, operators reroute traffic flow by provisioning every routing node from the source to the service node to the systems beyond the service node with a policy route. Operators manually configure each node or use a provisioning tool that performs the configuration for each node on behalf of the operator. This process is operationally complex to provision, maintain, and troubleshoot.
Service chaining policy
To route traffic through a service, you provision either a control policy or a data policy on the Cisco SD-WAN Controller. You use a control policy if the match criteria are based on a destination prefix or any of its attributes. You use a data policy if the match criteria include the source address, source port, DSCP value, or destination port of the packet or traffic flow. You can provision the policy directly using the CLI, or it can be pushed from Cisco SD-WAN Manager.
The Cisco SD-WAN Controller maintains OMP routes, TLOC routes, and service routes in its route table. A given OMP route carries a TLOC and the label associated with it. On a Cisco SD-WAN Controller, a policy can be applied that changes the TLOC and its associated label to be that of a service.
Tracking the health of the service chain
Beginning with Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN Release 17.3.1a, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN periodically probes devices providing network services to test whether they are operational. Tracking the availability of devices in the service chain helps to prevent a null route, which can occur if a policy routes traffic to a service device which is not available. By default, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN writes the tracking results to a service log, but this can be disabled.
Service provisioning and chaining in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
This section explains how Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN provisions services and implements service chaining to direct traffic through network services before reaching its destination.
Provisioning services in the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN overlay network
In the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN solution, the network operator enables and orchestrates all service chaining from a central controller, the Cisco SD-WAN Controller. The solution does not require configuration or provisioning on the devices.
The general flow of service chaining in a Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN network is as follows:
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Devices advertise the services available in their branch or campus, such as firewall, IDS, and IDP, to the Cisco SD-WAN Controllers in their domain. Multiple devices can advertise the same services.
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Devices also advertise their OMP routes and TLOCs to the Cisco SD-WAN Controllers.
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For traffic that requires services, the policy on the Cisco SD-WAN Controller changes the next hop for the OMP routes to the service landing point. In this way, the traffic is first processed by the service before being routed to its final destination.
The following example illustrates how service chaining works in the Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN solution.
The network has a centralized hub router connected to two branches, each with a device. The standard network design implements a control policy so that all traffic from branch site 1 to branch site 2 travels through the hub router. A firewall device sits behind the hub router.
When the design requires all traffic from site 1 to site 2 to be processed by the firewall, traffic from the device at site 1 still flows to the hub router. Instead of sending the traffic directly to site 2, the hub router redirects it to the firewall device. After the firewall completes its processing, it returns the cleared traffic to the hub, which then forwards it to the device at site 2.
Service route SAFI
Hub and local branch devices advertise the services available in their networks to the Cisco SD-WAN Controllers in the domain. They use service routes to do this. OMP sends these service routes using the service route Subsequent Address Family Identifier (SAFI) bits of the OMP NLRI. The Cisco SD-WAN Controllers maintain the service routes in their RIB. They do not propagate these routes back to the devices.
Each service route SAFI has the following attributes:
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VPN ID (vpn-id): Identifies the VPN to which the service belongs.
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Service ID (svc-id): Identifies the service that the service node advertises. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN software defines these predefined services: FW for firewall (svc-id 1), IDS for Intrusion Detection Systems (svc-id 2), IDP for Identity Providers (svc-id 3), and netsvc1 through netsvc4 for custom services (svc-id 4–7).
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Label: For traffic that must traverse a service, the Cisco SD-WAN Controller replaces the label in the OMP route with the service label to direct traffic to that service.
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Originator ID (originator-id): The IP address of the service node that advertises the service.
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TLOC: The transport location address of the device that hosts the service.
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Path ID (path-id): An identifier of the OMP path.
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VPN ID (vpn-id)—Identifies the VPN that the service belongs to.
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Service ID (svc-id)—Identifies the service being advertised by the service node. The Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN software has the following predefined services:
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FW, for firewall (maps to svc-id 1)
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IDS, for Intrusion Detection Systems (maps to svc-id 2)
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IDP, for Identity Providers (maps to svc-id 3)
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netsvc1, netsvc2, netsvc3, and netsvc4, which are reserved for custom services (they map to svc-id 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively)
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Label—For traffic that must traverse a service, the Cisco SD-WAN Controller replaces the label in the OMP route with the service label in order to direct the traffic to that service.
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Originator ID (originator-id)—The IP address of the service node that is advertising the service.
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TLOC—The transport location address of the device that is “hosting” the service.
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Path ID (path-id)—An identifier of the OMP path.
Restrictions for service chaining
Ensure to read the key restrictions for service chaining to ensure proper operation and performance on Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices.
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Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices do not support service insertion over a tunnel interface.
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You cannot use control policy–based service-chain actions on a locally hosted service chain.
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You cannot configure service-chain and AppQoE on the same device, regardless of whether you use data-policy or control-policy actions.

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