AWS Transit Gateway Connect: GRE + BGP = ?
GRE and BGP are technologies that are... mature. In this article we'll take a look at how you can use AWS Transit Gateway Connect to do some unique networking and application delivery in the cloud. In December 2020 AWS released a new feature of Transit Gateway (TGW) that enables a device to peer with TGW via a GRE/BGP tunnel.The intent was to be used with SD-WAN devices, but we can also use it for things like load balancing many internal private addresses, NAT gateway, etc... In this article we'll look at my experience of setting up TGW Connect in a lab environment based on F5's documentation for setting up GRE and BGP. Challenges with TGW For folks that are not familiar with TGW it is an AWS service that allows you to stitch together multiple physical and virtual networks via AWS internal networking (VPC peering) or via network protocols (VPN, Direct Connect (private L2)).Using TGW you can steer traffic to a specific network device by creating a route table entry within a VPC that points to the device's ENI (network interface).This is useful for a case where you want to send all traffic for a specific CIDR (192.0.2.0/24) to traverse that device. In the scenario where a device is responsible for a CIDR it is also responsible for updating the route table for HA.This could be done via Lambda function, our Cloud Failover Extension, manual updates, etc....The other downside is that this limits you to a single device per Availability Zone to receive traffic for that CIDR. TGW Connect provides a mechanism for the device to use a GRE tunnel/BGP to establish a connection to TGW and use dynamic routing protocols (BGP) to advertise the health of the device.This allows you to establish up to 4 devices to peer with TGW with up to 5 Gbps of traffic per connection (for comparison you can burst up to 50 Gbps with a VPC connection). Topology of TGW Connect When using TGW Connect it re-uses existing TGW connections.In practice this means that you are likely using an existing Direct Connect or VPC connection (I guess you could also use a VPN connection, but that would be weird). See also: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/simplify-sd-wan-connectivity-with-aws-transit-gateway-connect/ Configuring a BIG-IP for TGW Connect To use a BIG-IP with TGW Connect you will need a device that is licensed for BGP (also called Advanced Routing, part of Better/Best).Follow the steps for setting up TGW Connect and be sure to specify a different peer ASN than your TGW (you will need to use eBGP).The "Peer Address" will be the self-ip of the BIG-IP on the AWS VPC (when using a VPC). Configuring target VPC When setting up TGW Connect you will peer with an existing VPC.In the subnet that you want to use with TGW Connect (Peer Address of GRE tunnel) you will need to have a route that points to the TGW peer address; for example if you specify a CIDR of 10.254.254.0/24 for TGW and the peer address is 10.254.254.11 you will need to create a route that includes 10.254.254.0/24 on the subnet for BIG-IP peer address.Also make sure to open up Security Groups to allow GRE traffic to traverse to/from the interface that will be used for the GRE tunnel.The rule should allow the IP of the peer address (i.e. 10.254.254.11). Route to TGW from 10.1.7.0/24 GRE Tunnel On the BIG-IP under Network / Tunnels you will need to create a GRE Tunnel.You can use the default "gre" tunnel profile.Specify the same "Peer Address" that youused when setting up TGW Connect. You will also want to specify the Remote Address that is the TGW address. BGP Peer Next you will need to configure the BIG-IP to act as a BGP peer to TGW connecting over the GRE tunnel.TGW requires that you use an IP in the 169.254.0.0 range.This will require modify a db variable to allow that address to be used as a self-ip.The tmsh command to use is. modify sys db config.allow.rfc3927 { value "enable" } You can then create your BGP peer address to match the value that you used in TGW Connect. The BGP peer address will need to be configured to allow BGP updates (port 179).Since the traffic is occurring over the GRE tunnel there is no need to update AWS Security Groups (invisible to the ENI). Setting up BGP Peering TGW Connect requires eBGP to be used.The following is an example of a working config.This also assumes you go through the pre-req of setting up BGP/RHI. Be careful to only advertise the routes that you want, when you use "redistribute kernel" it will also advertise 0.0.0.0/0! Please also see: https://support.f5.com/csp/article/K15923612 ! no service password-encryption ! router bgp 65520 bgp graceful-restart restart-time 120 aggregate-address 10.0.0.0/16 summary-only aggregate-address 10.1.0.0/16 summary-only aggregate-address 10.2.0.0/16 summary-only aggregate-address 10.3.0.0/16 summary-only redistribute kernel neighbor 169.254.10.2 remote-as 64512 neighbor 169.254.10.2 ebgp-multihop 2 neighbor 169.254.10.2 soft-reconfiguration inbound neighbor 169.254.10.2 prefix-list tenlist out neighbor 169.254.10.3 remote-as 64512 neighbor 169.254.10.3 ebgp-multihop 2 neighbor 169.254.10.3 soft-reconfiguration inbound neighbor 169.254.10.3 prefix-list tenlist out ! ip prefix-list tenlist seq 5 deny 10.254.254.0/24 ip prefix-list tenlist seq 10 permit 10.0.0.0/8 ge 16 ! line con 0 login line vty 0 39 login ! end This example was created with help from a BGP expert Brandon Frelich. In the example above we only limiting routes to 3 CIDRs and configuring ECMP.At this point the BIG-IP could allocate VIPs on the CIDR, act as an AFM firewall, and if we used 0.0.0.0/0 it could act as an outbound gateway. Verifying the Setup You should be able to see your BGP connection go green in the AWS console and also see the status by running "show ip bgp neighbors" from imish. AWS Console ip-10-1-1-112.ec2.internal[0]>show ip bgp summary BGP router identifier 169.254.10.1, local AS number 65520 BGP table version is 4 2 BGP AS-PATH entries 0 BGP community entries Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd 169.254.10.2 4 64512 293 293 4 0 0 00:47:08 3 169.254.10.3 4 64512 293 292 4 0 0 00:47:08 3 Total number of neighbors 2 Output from imish (tmos)# list /ltm virtual-address one-line ltm virtual-address 10.0.0.0 { address 10.0.0.0 arp disabled floating disabled icmp-echo disabled mask 255.255.0.0 route-advertisement selective traffic-group none unit 0 } ltm virtual-address 10.1.0.0 { address 10.1.0.0 arp disabled floating disabled icmp-echo disabled mask 255.255.0.0 route-advertisement selective traffic-group none unit 0 } ltm virtual-address 10.2.0.0 { address 10.2.0.0 arp disabled floating disabled icmp-echo disabled mask 255.255.0.0 route-advertisement selective traffic-group none unit 0 } (tmos)# list /net route tgw net route tgw { interface /Common/tgw-connect network 10.0.0.0/8 } Output from TMSH. Note route-advertisement is enabled on the virtual-addresses. We are using a static route to steer traffic to the GRE tunnel. You should also see any routes advertised as well. ECMP Considerations When you deploy multiple BIG-IP devices TGW can use ECMP to spray traffic across multiple devices (by enabling traffic group None or multiple standalone devices). Be aware that if you need to statefully inspect traffic you may want to enable SNAT to have the return traffic go to the same device or use traffic-group-1 to run in Active/Standby via Route Health Injection. Otherwise you will need to follow the guidance on setting up a forwarding virtual server to ignore the system connection table. Routing Connections One of the issues that a customer discovered when exploring this solution is that the BIG-IP will initially send health checks across the GRE tunnel using an IP from the 169.254.x.x address range, this follows the address selection criteria that a BIG-IP uses. One method of dealing with this is to assign an IP address in a range that you would like to advertise across the tunnel like 198.168.254.0/24. Creating a self-ip of 198.168.254.253 that you assign to the tunnel. To send traffic for a different range (i.e. 10.0.0.0/16) you can then create a static route on the BIG-IP that points to 198.168.254.1. Since the BIG-IP sees the address is on the tunnel it will correctly forward the traffic through the tunnel. Another question that arose was whether it was possible to have asymmetric traffic flows of utilizing both the GRE TGW Connect tunnel and the TGW VPC Connection of the VPC itself. I discovered that YES this is possible by following the guidance on enabling asymmetrically routed traffic. It hurts your brain a bit, but here's the results of a flow that is using both a Connect and VPC connection. You can do some crazy things, but with great power... Request traffic over VPC Connection Response traffic over TGW Connect (GRE) Other Options You could also achieve a similar result by using default VPC peering and making use of Cloud Failover Extension for updating the route table.The benefit of that approach is that you don't have to deal with GRE/BGP! It does limit you to a single device per-AZ vs. being able to get up to 4 devices running across a connection.Journey to the Multi-Cloud Challenges
Introduction The proliferation of internet-based applications, digital transformations accelerated by the pandemic, an increase in multi-cloud adoption, and the rise of the distributed cloud paradigm allbringnew business opportunitiesas well as new operational challenges. According to Propeller Insights Survey; 75% of all organizations are deploying apps in multiple clouds. 63% of those organizations are usingthree or more clouds. And 56% are findingit difficult to manage workloads across different cloud providers, citing challenges with security, reliability, and connectivity. Below I outline some of the common challenges F5 has seen and illustrate how F5 Distributed Cloud is able to address those challenges.For the purpose of the following examples I am using this demo architecture. Challenge #1: IP Conflict and IP exhaustion As organizations accelerate their digital transformation, they begin to experience significant network growth and changes. As their adoption of multiple public clouds and edge providers expands, they begin to encounter challenges with IP overlap and IP exhaustion. Typically, thesechallenges seldom happen on the Internet as IP addresses are centrally managed. However, this challenge is common for non-Internet traffic becauseorganizations use private/reserved IP ranges (RFC1918) within their networks and any organization is free to use any private ranges they want. This presents a increasingly common problem as networks expand into public clouds, with the ease of infrastructure bootstrapping using automation, the needs of multi-cloud networking, and finally mergers and acquisitions. The F5 Distributed Cloud canhelp organizations overcome IP conflict and IP exhaustion challenges by provisioning multiple apps with a single IP address. How to Provision Multiple Apps with a Single IP Address (~8min) Challenge #2: Easy consumable application services via service catalogue A multi-cloudparadigm causes applications to be very distributed. We often seeapplications running on multiple on-prem data centers, at the edge, and inpublic cloud infrastructure. Making those applicationseasily available ofteninvolves many infrastructureand security control changes - not an easy task. This includes common tasks such as service advertisement, updates to network routing and switching, changing firewall rules, and provisioning DNS.In this demo, wedemonstrate how to seamlessly provision and advertise services, to and from public cloud providers anddata centers. This capability enables an organization to seamlessly provision services and create consumable service catalogues. How to Seamlessly Provision Services to/from the Cloud Edge (~4min) Challenge #3: Operational (Day-2) Complexities Often users have multiple discreet tools managing their infrastructure and each toolprovides their owndashboard for telemetry, visibility, and observability. Users need access to all these tools into a single consistent view so they can tell exactly what is happening in their environments. F5 Distributed Cloud Console provides a 'single pane of glass' for telemetry, visibility and observability providing operational efficiency for Day-2 operations designed to reduce total cost of ownership. Get a Single Pane of Glass on Telemetry, Visibility and Observability (~7min) Challenge #4: Cloud Vendor lock-in impede business agility. Most organizations do not want their cloud workload locked into a particular cloud provider.Cloud vendor lock-in can bea major barrier to the adoption of cloud computing and CIO's show some concern with vendor lock-in perFlexera's2020 CIO Priorities Report,To avoid cloud lock-in, create application resiliency,and get back some of the freedoms of cloud consumption - movingworkload from cloud to cloud - organizations need to be able to dynamically movecloud providers quickly and easilyin the unlikely event that one cloud provider becomes unavailable. Workload Portability - How to Seamlessly Move Workloads from Cloud to Cloud (~4min) Challenge #5: Consistent Security Policiesacross clouds How do you ensure that every security policy you require is applied and enforced consistentlyacross the entire fleet of endpoints? According to F5 2020 State of Application Services Report, 59% of respondents said thatapplying consistent security policies across all company applications was one of their biggestchallenges in multi-cloud security. This demo shows how to apply consistent security policies(WAF) across a fleet of cloud workloads deployed at the edge. This helps reduce risk, increasecompliance, and helps maintaineffective governance. How to Apply Consistent Security Policies Across Clouds (~5min) Challenge #6: Complexities of multiple cloud networking and integration with AWS transit gateway – management of security controls. A multi-cloud strategy introducescomplexities aroundnetworking and security control between clouds and within clouds. Within one cloud (e.g., AWS VPC), an organization may use the AWS transit gateway (TGW) to stitch together the Inter-VPC communication. Managingmultiple VPCs attached to a TGW is, by itself, a challenge in managing security control between VPC. In this demo, we show a simple way to leverage the F5 Distributed Cloud integration with AWS TGW to manage security policy across VPCs(also known as East-West traffic). This demo also demonstrates connecting an AWS VPC with other cloud providers such as Azure, GCP, or an on-prem cloud solution in order to unify theconnectivity and reachability of your workload. Multi-Cloud Integration with AWS Transit Gateway (~19min)
