Cisco 12000/10700 V3.1.1 - Manual (Page 503)

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Cisco 12000/10700 v3.1.1 Router Manager User Guide
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MPLS VRF Management
This chapter describes the various MPLS VRF Management tasks that can be performed using the
Cisco 12000/10720 Router Manager application. This chapter is divided into the following main
sections:
• Introduction to VRF Management
• VRF Management Workflows
• Launching the MPLS VRF Management Windows
• Creating VRF Objects in the EM
• Creating and Configuring the VRF Policy on a Device
• Associating a VRF Policy with an Interface
• VRF Fault Management
Introduction to VRF Management
VPN Routing and Forwarding (VRF) is an IOS route table instance for connecting a set of sites to a VPN
service. A VRF contains a template of VPN Routing/Forwarding table in a PE router.
The overlapping addresses, usually resulting from usage of private IP addresses in customer networks,
are one of the major obstacles to successful deployment of peer-to-peer VPN implementation. The
MPLS/VPN technology provides an elegant solution to dilemma.
Each VPN has its own routing and forwarding table in the router, so any customer or site that belongs to
a VPN is provided access only to the set of routes contained within that table. Any PE router in the
MPLS/VPN network therefore contains a number of per-VPN routing tables and a global routing table,
that is used to reach other routers in the provider network. Effectively, a number of virtual routers are
created in a single physical router.
VRF Manager provides an encapsulation for the VRF template as EM Object Model for better
manageability and user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI).