Multi-VRF on the same device

Question

Hi, I have a certain design that I am thinking of implementing however need some help to understand the feasability as well as confirm if it is indeed possible to do it. It is sort of like configuring multi-vrf on the same device and leak routes from them into a global routing table. It seems impractical to do it however if I want to limit connectivity between various vlan's on a L3 level without ACL's this seems the better option. Please do correct me if that is not so.
Design
A device which has a number of vlan interfaces on the north side let's say a 6500 configured with a number of vlan's. Each vlan has its own vrf. The SVI interfaces are where I apply the ip vrf forwarding XXX command. This device will be like the PE I assume?
Now I might be running various routing protocols (EIGRP, RIP, Static, BGP) within these vrf's with the devices on the other end that have no idea about vrf's. Since I have a number of routes I have learnt within their own vrf's I want to either export all these routes into the global table or create a global vrf where I can export all these routes.
The reason being that I want to propogate all these routes to the south side. The south side interface of this PE 6500 is physically connected to a firewall via a L3 point-to-point interface. That firewall's south interface in turns connects to another switch.
I am going to form a BGP session with between the Top PE 6500 Switch and the bottom switch and I would like to propogate all the routes that I have in their own individual vrf's on the Top 6500 PE switch to the bottom switch via BGP.
I don't think I can run MP-BGP due to the firewalls being in the physical path. Besides I would like to run a normal BGP IPv4 session between the top and bottom switch to keep it simple and familiar.
The reason I would like to have every vlan in its own vrf is to limit connectivity between the vlan's without configuring ACL's. It provides a bit more security between the VLAN's.
What I am not sure about is how the packet forwarding would work or if it would work at all.
Thx for your help.

Answer 1

Hi Vikram,
Firstly, you mentioned that the reason for going down this path is for security between the different VLANs. Have you looked at Private VLANs as another option?
Certainly leaking routes between different VRFs can be achieved and I would recommend having a 'Shared VRF' that you leak in and out of. Having the Firewall between the PE nodes does present an issue both for BGP as well as LDP peering if you wanted to establish a MP-BGP session. From what you have mentioned above, this solution might over-complicate what you are trying to do.
Are the network ranges in each VLAN also unique?
Can the Firewall run IGP? If so, maybe you could run Private VLANs and the use an IGP to propogate the networks through the FW across to your other switch? If you were to establish a BGP session between the switches each side of the FW, the FW would also need to either become a BGP peer or have IGP enabled. Each BGP node would then need to inject the BGP routes into IGP. If this isnt done, the FW will drop traffic as there would not be a suitable route.
Are the resources through the FW shared or are they also client connected networks?
Trent Husking