Deploying an AWS VPC Route Server for Elastic VMware Service

Architecture

One of the pre-requisites for Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) is a VPC Route Server. The Route Server is responsible for propagating routes created within the EVS environment into the VPC Subnet Route Tables. At a minimum, you must propagate routes to the Service Access Subnet. You may also optionally configure Route Server to propagate routes to other subnets as required.

Creating the Route Server

The first step is to create the route server itself, then we'll attach it to our VPC and configure the route propagation. Ensure that you create the Route Server in the same region that you will deploy Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) into. Give the Route server a name, the ASN for the Amazon side of the BGP peering and configure ‘Persist routes’ as required – between 1 and 5 minutes. Persistent routes is a feature will keep BGP advertised routes in the route table (for 1-5 minutes) in the event of a BGP disruption.

Associate it to the VPC

Next, we need to Associate the new Route Server to the VPC. Click on the 'Association' tab and then click on 'Associate route server' button. In the pop up window, select our EVS VPC and click on 'Associate route server'

Configure Route Propagation

To configure which route tables the EVS networks are propagated to, select the 'Propagations' tab and then click on 'Enable propagation’. Select the service access route table from the drop-down box and click ‘Enable propagation’. Repeat this step for any other (optional) route tables that you wish to propagate the routes to.

Create two Route Server endpoints

For an EVS deployment, 2x endpoints are required, with each endpoint having its own peer. In the ‘Route server endpoints’ tab click on ‘Create route server endpoint’. Enter a name for the endpoint, make sure the route server is selected and select your ‘Service access subnet’ from the drop-down box. Repeat this step to create a second Route server endpoint

Create a Route Server peer for each endpoint

Once the endpoints are shown as ‘Available’, go to the ‘Route server peers’ tab and create the first peer. On the next screen, enter the following:

• The name of the peer
• Select the first Route server endpoint you created
• Enter the IP Address of the first NSX Edge Uplink.
• Enter the ASN of the NSX T0 router
• Select ‘BGP keepalive’ as the method for Peer liveness detection Repeat for the second Route server peer, ensuring you select the second Endpoint and enter the IP address of the second NSX Edge Uplink

Results

You have now created a Route Server, as well as two endpoints and two peers, that can be used for your Elastic VMware Service deployment.