What Is Multi-Region Fabric?
Multi-Region Fabric, formerly known as hierarchical SD-WAN, is a suite of capabilities designed to streamline common yet operationally complex WAN deployment use cases. With these capabilities, IT teams can easily build and manage geographically distributed SD-WAN networks, connecting different sites through a diverse range of WAN transports.
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How Multi-Region Fabric works
What are the fundamental building blocks of Multi-Region Fabric?
Multi-Region Fabric uses logically distinct SD-WAN regions, interconnected through a shared inter-region network. SD-WAN border routers enable connections between regions, providing redundancy and network scalability.
What flexibility do IT teams have in choosing network transport for inter-region connectivity?
IT teams can choose from a variety of transports for inter-region connectivity, including premium middle mile, cloud provider's backbone, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), or internet. Access regions can also choose internet, MPLS, or LTE connectivity as needed.
How does Multi-Region Fabric simplify network configuration and routing?
Multi-Region Fabric simplifies network configuration and routing by providing region-aware routing, site scalability, and end-to-end WAN segmentation. Manual configuration of hop-by-hop routing policies is eliminated, saving time and reducing errors. Routing policies can be defined for each region, which facilitates network expansion to new sites and enables centralized management of the SD-WAN network.
How does Multi-Region Fabric reduce the complexity of network connectivity and infrastructure management?
Your IT teams can make network connectivity and infrastructure management much less complex with Multi-Region Fabric. There are a range of features that help achieve this, including:
A single dashboard to manage the entire fabric
Intuitive user-defined site grouping (based on geography, function, department, and so on)
Better grouping options using sub-regions for more granular control
Automatic restriction of overlay tunnels between groups and regions for optimized traffic flow
Simplified configuration, guided workflows, and advanced monitoring capabilities through Catalyst SD-WAN Manager
Flexibility to configure different network topologies by region
WAN transport flexibility by region or group
Access to detailed metrics and insights specific to each region
Scalability of the control plane, for increased capacity by region
Addressing networking challenges
Heterogeneous network environments
Environments that include a mix of on-premises, cloud-based, and remote sites can be complicated to manage. Multi-Region Fabric simplifies the management of heterogeneous network environments. It accomplishes this by providing a single dashboard to oversee and manage the entire network fabric. Furthermore, it offers intuitive user-defined site grouping options based on various factors like geography, function, and department. This simplification of network connectivity and infrastructure management empowers your IT teams to efficiently handle these complex and diverse environments.
Multicloud deployments
Organizations today often use a variety of cloud-based applications and services. This means dealing with many cloud service providers and managing multicloud deployments. Multi-Region Fabric simplifies the deployment of these applications and services by providing a single network fabric that can connect to all of them.
Regionalized networks
To scale networks more easily, organizations are pivoting to designs that involve splitting the network into multiple regions with geo-specific points of presence or service exchanges and a middle-mile WAN or global backbone WAN network. Multi-Region Fabric provides a single network fabric that connects all regions and helps simplify regional network management.
Security
Traditional WAN architectures can be vulnerable to security threats. Multi-Region Fabric can help improve security by providing a more secure routing path for traffic and by enabling the use of security features such as encryption, access control, segmentation, and intrusion detection.
Cost
Deploying and maintaining a traditional WAN architecture can be expensive. Multi-Region Fabric can help reduce costs by simplifying the network architecture and by giving IT teams the power to choose the most cost-effective transport options for each region.
Key features
Role assignment to SD-WAN devices
All branches are set up as edge routers, and all regional hubs are set up as border routers.
Regional assignment to SD-WAN devices
All devices can be configured to belong to specific access regions. Devices within the same region build direct SD-WAN tunnels and connectivity with one another. Devices in different regions do not build direct SD-WAN tunnels with one another but are connected through their respective regional border routers.
Automatic region-aware routing
Routing information can be isolated on a per-region basis while allowing inter-regional traffic flow with border routers.
Enhanced control-plane scalability
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controllers (formerly vSmart) can be dedicated by region or by a group of regions.
Scalability to deliver higher throughput
Multi-Region Fabric can scale to support a large number of regions and sites, making it easy to add new regions or sites to your network without having to make major changes to its infrastructure.
End-to-end WAN segmentation
Multi-Region Fabric enables WAN segmentation for secure and reliable connectivity across inter-region or intra-region, site to site, or site to cloud.
Consistent traffic-steering policy
Common traffic-steering policy and intent can be enforced across your entire WAN or customized for each specific region.
Simplified network management
A single dashboard (Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager) is used to configure, monitor, troubleshoot, and manage the network.
Use cases
Regionalizing network services
Regionalization of network services can involve services such as security, identity management, NetFlow, logging, and WAN optimization.
Improving multicloud and SaaS user experience
Multi-Region Fabric offers configuration simplicity, enabling quick and easy operationalization of high-quality on-ramps to SaaS and cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. These connections are established through regional points of presence (POPs) for enhanced efficiency.
Reducing time spent on the last mile
Multi-Region Fabric optimizes last-mile time by intelligently using multiple transport options and dynamically selecting the best path for traffic.
Controlling traffic paths between domains
Multi-Region Fabric enables efficient traffic control between individual regional networks and the core region. The ability to employ unique routing infrastructure, service providers, and traffic policies simplifies the configuration process.
Benefits
Multi-Region Fabric offers managed service providers (MSPs) and global enterprises the capabilities to enhance, scale up, and simplify the management of Cisco SD-WAN fabric across regions. Multi-Region Fabric helps:
- Improve flexibility and traffic performance across regions by selecting the best transport for each region
- Simplify policy design to prevent certain traffic routing failures caused by policy
- Enforce security with end-to-end encryption of inter-region traffic
- Simplify and gain better control over traffic paths between domains
- Enable site-to-site traffic paths between disjointed providers
- Optimize tunnel encapsulation for the core region and regional networks
Enable MSPs to effectively implement advanced deployments, leading to cost reductions and enhanced operational efficiencies