Juniper MX Series, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. The Virtual MX

The vMX Series 3D Universal Edge router is the virtual instance of the MX Series router. While the vMX can’t compete with the physical MX with regards to capacity per instance (even with today’s vMX reaching 100 Gbps of throughput), the vMX does bring the network agility and flexibility that a big box like the MX2020 can’t offer. A physical device is optimized to provide large densities of ports and bandwidth per slot, whereas vMX offers more elasticity, while allowing you to easily scale out network services. As with all virtualized components, vMX can be orchestrated and combined in a service chain with other virtual network elements such as a firewall (vSRX), a load balancer, or a NAT gateway. The emerging SDN and NFV initiatives power the deployment of virtualized carrier-grade routing platforms and with the vMX, providers get the best of both worlds: the physical and virtual.

The vMX will facilitate the development of new network service models by lowering some cost barriers and isolating certain risks. This chapter presents the benefits of the virtual router and then covers some typical use cases and type of deployments within the virtual platform. After that, the chapter takes a slight deep dive into some technical aspects of the vMX, showing you how this virtual implementation is done and how to deploy it for diverse usages such as lab simulation or high-bandwidth applications. The chapter concludes with one final case study to illustrate this ...