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new virtual hub routing feature
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about-virtual-hub-routing-preference.md

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title titleSuffix description author ms.service ms.topic ms.date ms.author
Virtual WAN virtual hub routing preference - Preview
Azure Virtual WAN
Learn about Virtual WAN Virtual virtual hub routing preference.
cherylmc
virtual-wan
conceptual
05/31/2022
cherylmc

Virtual hub routing preference (Preview)

A Virtual WAN virtual hub connects to virtual networks (VNets) and on-premises using connectivity gateways, such as site-to-site (S2S) VPN gateway, ExpressRoute (ER) gateway, point-to-site (P2S) gateway, and SD-WAN Network Virtual Appliance (NVA). The virtual hub router provides central route management and enables advanced routing scenarios using route propagation, route association, and custom route tables.

The virtual hub router takes routing decisions using built-in route selection algorithm. To influence routing decisions in virtual hub router towards on-premises, we now have a new Virtual WAN hub feature called Hub routing preference (HRP). When a virtual hub router learns multiple routes across S2S VPN, ER and SD-WAN NVA connections for a destination route-prefix in on-premises, the virtual hub router’s route selection algorithm will adapt based on the hub routing preference configuration and selects the best routes. You can now configure Hub routing preference using the Azure Preview portal.

Important

The Virtual WAN feature Hub routing preference is currently in public preview. If you are interested in trying this feature, please follow the documentation below. This public preview is provided without a service-level agreement and shouldn't be used for production workloads. Certain features might not be supported, might have constrained capabilities, or might not be available in all Azure locations. For more information, see Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

Route selection algorithm for virtual hub

This section explains the route selection algorithm in a virtual hub along with the control provided by HRP. When a virtual hub has multiple routes to a destination prefix for on-premises, the best route or routes are selected in the order of preference as follows:

  1. Select routes with Longest Prefix Match (LPM).

  2. Prefer static routes over BGP routes.

  3. Select best path based on the HRP configuration. There are three possible configurations for HRP and the route preference changes accordingly.

    • ExpressRoute (This is the default setting.)

      1. Prefer routes from connections local to a virtual hub over routes learned from remote hub.
      2. If there are still routes from both ER and S2S VPN connections, then see below. Else proceed to the next rule.
        • If all the routes are local to the hub, then choose routes learned from ER connections because HRP is set to ER.
        • If all the routes are through remote hubs, then choose route from S2S VPN connection over ER connections because any transit between ER to ER is supported only if the circuits have ER Global Reach enabled and an Azure Firewall or NVA is provisioned inside the virtual hub.
      3. Then, prefer the routes with the shortest BGP AS-Path length.

    • VPN

      1. Prefer routes from connections local to a virtual hub over routes learned from remote hub.
      2. If there are routes from both ER and S2S VPN connections, then choose S2S VPN routes.
      3. Then, prefer the routes with the shortest BGP AS-Path length.

    • AS Path

      1. Prefer routes with the shortest BGP AS-Path length irrespective of the source of the route advertisements. For example, whether the routes are learned from on-premises connected via S2S VPN or ER.
      2. Prefer routes from connections local to the virtual hub over routes learned from remote hub.
      3. If there are routes from both ER and S2S VPN connections, then see below. Else proceed to the next rule.
        • If all the routes are local to the virtual hub, then choose routes from ER connections.
        • If all the routes are through remote virtual hubs, then choose routes from S2S VPN connections.

  4. If there are still multiple routes, load-balance across all paths using equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) routing.

Things to note:

  • When there are multiple virtual hubs in a Virtual WAN scenario, a virtual hub selects the best routes using the route selection algorithm described above, and then advertises them to the other virtual hubs in the virtual WAN.

  • Limitation: If a route-prefix is reachable via ER or VPN connections, and via virtual hub SD-WAN NVA, then the latter route is ignored by the route-selection algorithm. Therefore, the flows to prefixes reachable only via virtual hub SD-WAN NVA will ever take the route through the NVA. This is a limitation during the Preview phase of the Hub routing preference feature.

Routing scenarios

Virtual WAN hub routing preference is beneficial when multiple on-premises are advertising routes to same destination prefixes, which can happen in customer Virtual WAN scenarios that use any of the following setups.

  • Virtual WAN hub using ER connections as primary and VPN connections as back-up.
  • Virtual WAN with connections to multiple on-premises and customer is using one on-premises site as active, and another as standby for a service deployed using the same IP address ranges in both the sites.
  • Virtual WAN has both VPN and ER connections simultaneously and the customer is distributing services across connections by controlling route advertisements from on-premises.

The example below is a hypothetical Virtual WAN deployment that encompasses multiple scenarios described above. We'll use it to demonstrate the route selection by a virtual hub.

A brief overview of the setup:

  • Each on-premises site is connected to one or more of the virtual hubs Hub_1 or Hub_2 using S2S VPN, or ER circuit, or SD-WAN NVA connections.

  • For each on-premises site, the ASN it uses and the route-prefixes it advertises are listed in the diagram. Notice that there are multiple routes for several route-prefixes.

    :::image type="content" source="./media/about-virtual-hub-routing-preference/diagram.png" alt-text="Example diagram for hub-route-preference scenario." lightbox="./media/about-virtual-hub-routing-preference/diagram.png":::

Let’s say there are flows from a virtual network VNET1 connected to Hub_1 to various destination route-prefixes advertised by the on-premises. The path that each of those flows takes for different configurations of Virtual WAN hub routing preference on Hub_1 and Hub_2 is described in the tables below. The paths have been labeled in the diagram and referred to in the tables below for ease of understanding.

When only local routes are available:

Flow destination route-prefix HRP of Hub_1 HRP of Hub_2 Path used by flow All possible paths Explanation
10.61.1.5 AS Path N/A 4 1,2,3,4 Paths 1, 4 and 5 have the shortest AS Path but ER takes precedence over VPN, so path 4 is chosen.
10.61.1.5 VPN N/A 1 1,2,3,4 VPN route is preferred over ER, so paths 1 and 2 are preferred, but path 1 has the shorter AS Path.
10.61.1.5 ER N/A 4 1,2,3,4 ER routes 3 and 4 are selected, but path 4 has the shorter AS Path.

When only remote routes are available:

Flow destination route-prefix HRP of Hub_1 HRP of Hub_2 Path used by flow All possible paths Explanation
10.62.1.5 Any setting AS Path or ER ECMP across 9 & 10 7,8,9,10,11 All available paths are remote and have equal AS Path, so ER paths 9 and 10 are chosen and advertised by Hub_2. Hub_1’s HRP setting has no impact.
10.62.1.5 Any setting VPN ECMP across 7 & 8 7,8,9,10,11 The Hub_2 will only advertise best routes 7 & 8 and they're only choices for Hub_1, so Hub_1’s HRP setting has no impact.

When local and remote routes are available:

Flow destination route-prefix HRP of Hub_1 HRP of Hub_2 Path used by flow All possible paths Explanation
10.50.2.5  Any setting Any setting 1 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,10,11 Hub_2 will advertise only 7 due to LPM. Hub_1 selects 1 due to LPM and being local route.
10.50.1.5 AS Path or ER Any setting 4 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,10,11 Hub_2 will advertise different routes based on its HRP setting, but Hub_1 will select 4 due to being local, ER route with the shortest AS Path.
10.50.1.5 VPN Any setting 1 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,10,11 Hub_2 will advertise different routes based on its HRP setting, but Hub_1 will select 1 due to being local, VPN route with the shortest AS Path.
10.55.2.5 AS Path AS Path or ER 9 2,3,8,9 Hub_2 will only advertise 9, because 8 and 9 have same AS Path but 9 is ER route. On Hub_1, among 2, 3 and 9 routes, it selects 9 due to having the shortest AS Path.
10.55.2.5 AS Path VPN 8 2,3,8,9 Hub_2 will only advertise 8, because 8 and 9 have same AS Path but 8 is VPN route. On Hub_1, among 2, 3 and 8 routes, it selects 8 due to having the shortest AS Path.
10.55.2.5 ER Any setting 3 2,3,8,9 Hub_2 will advertise different routes based on its HRP setting, but Hub_1 will select 3 due to being local and ER.
10.55.2.5 VPN Any setting 2 2,3,8,9 Hub_2 will advertise different routes based on its HRP setting, but Hub_1 will select 2 due to being local and VPN.

Key takeaways:

  • To prefer remote routes over local routes on a virtual hub, set its hub routing preference to AS Path and increase the AS Path length of the local routes.

Next steps