Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

A VRF object in NetBox represents a Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) domain. Each VRF is essentially an independent routing table. VRFs are commonly used to isolate customers or organizations from one another within a network, or to route overlapping address space (e.g. multiple instances of the 10.0.0.0/8 space). Each VRF may be assigned to a specific tenant to aid in organizing the available IP space by customer or internal user.

Each prefix, IP range, and IP address may be assigned to one (and only one) VRF. If you have a prefix or IP address which exists in multiple VRFs, you will need to create a separate instance of it in NetBox for each VRF. Any such object not assigned to a VRF is said to belong to the "global" table.

Fields

Name

The configured or administrative name for the VRF instance.

Route Distinguisher

A route distinguisher is used to map routes to VRFs within a device's routing table e.g. for MPLS/VPN. The assignment of a route distinguisher is optional. If defined, the RD is expected to take one of the forms prescribed in RFC 4364, however its formatting is not strictly enforced.

Enforce Unique Space

By default, NetBox will permit duplicate prefixes to be assigned to a VRF. This behavior can be toggled by setting the "enforce unique" flag on the VRF model.

Note

Enforcement of unique IP space can be toggled for global table (non-VRF prefixes) using the ENFORCE_GLOBAL_UNIQUE configuration setting.

Import & Export Targets

Each VRF may have one or more import and/or export route targets applied to it. Route targets are used to control the exchange of routes (prefixes) among VRFs in L3VPNs.