Data Center Interconnect Introduction

ESI MAC Most Significant Byte

By default, ESI MAC msb (most significant byte) is set to 2 on all blueprints. Every Apstra blueprint that's connected must have a unique msb to prevent service-impacting issues. Before creating remote EVPN gateways, change ESI MAC msb accordingly. (You can leave one of them at the default value.)

Apstra is programmed to assign a unique ESI MAC address starting with the value 00.00.00.00.00.01.

This feature allows you to manually configure the most significant byte (MSB) of the MAC address.

Updating this value results in the regeneration of all ESI MACs in the blueprint. This is necessary to address the data center interconnect (DCI) use case requirement where ESI values must be unique across multiple fabrics (blueprints). For example, if you have data centers DC1, DC2, and DC3 all managed by Apstra and connected via Apstra DCI, by default, each of them will have the same internally generated ESI MAC. You would use this feature to provide a unique value to DC2 and DC3.