EEM, HSRP and BGP for HA and load balancing

This post describes how to use EEM to monitor BGP changes and trigger automatic configurations to remediate failures.

Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager (EEM) is a powerful and flexible subsystem that provides real-time network event detection and on-board automation. It supports more than 20 event detectors that are highly integrated with different IOS software components to trigger actions in response to network events creating policies aligned with the business logic

With EEM + HSRP running between two edge routers, network engineers can provide redundancy in case of any the following happens:

• Router failure.
• BGP peering failure / external interface failure.
• Internal interface failure.
• Default-route not received from the ISP

Key concepts:

• Two VLANs allow the Internet traffic segregation using different edge routers. Each router is the HSRP active router for a VLAN while the peer is the standby:
• Monitoring the BGP session using EEM is key for detecting changes on real time.
• For detecting default routes missing from the routing table, it’s as easy as leveraging on tracking objects checking the routing table.
• When any of the previous situations happen, the internal interfaces are automatically disabled, hence the outgoing traffic is forwarded throught the peer router.
• Once the BGP session is restored or the default route is back in the RIB, the internal interfaces are enabled again.

RTR-EDGE1

track timer ip route 5
track 1 ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 reachability
 delay down 2 up 2
 event track 1 state down
 event track 1 state up

event manager applet ISP1_UP
 event syslog pattern "%BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor 10.0.0.1 Up"
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface gi0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "no shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"
event manager applet ISP1_Down
 event syslog pattern "%BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor 10.0.0.1 Down"
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface gi0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"
event manager applet default-route-lost
 event track 1 state down
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface GigabitEthernet0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"

event manager applet default-route-recovery
 event track 1 state up
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface GigabitEthernet0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "no shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"


RTR-EDGE2

track timer ip route 5
track 1 ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 reachability
 delay down 2 up 2
 event track 1 state down
 event track 1 state up

event manager applet ISP2_Down
 event syslog pattern "%BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor 10.0.1.1 Down"
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface gi0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"
event manager applet ISP2_UP
 event syslog pattern "%BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor 10.0.1.1 Up"
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface gi0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "no shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"
event manager applet default-route-lost
 event track 1 state down
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface GigabitEthernet0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"
event manager applet default-route-recovery
 event track 1 state up
 action 1.0 cli command "enable"
 action 2.0 cli command "config t"
 action 3.0 cli command "interface GigabitEthernet0/1"
 action 4.0 cli command "no shutdown"
 action 5.0 cli command "end"