SD-WAN Overlay Management Protocol (OMP)

The Overlay Management Protocol (OMP) is the protocol responsible for establishing and maintaining the Cisco SD-WAN control plane. It provides the following services:

• Orchestration of overlay network communication, including connectivity among network sites, service chaining, and VPN topologies
• Distribution of service-level routing information and related location mappings
• Distribution of data plane security parameters
• Central control and distribution of routing policy

OMP is the control protocol that is used to exchange routing, policy, and management information between the vSmart controllers and vEdge routers in the overlay network. It is enabled by default, so after you start up the vSmart controllers and vEdge routers, it is not necessary to explicitly configure or enable OMP. These devices automatically initiate OMP peering sessions between themselves, and the two IP end points of the OMP session are the system IP addresses of the two devices.

Traffic Flow:

• TCP based Control plane protocol
• Runs between:
  • vEdge routers and vSmarts
  • vSmarts
• Full mesh (parameters)
• Additional parameters (Graceful restart)
• VPN Segmentation

Service routes orginated from vEdges/vSmarts

• Reachability [vRoutes, TLOCs]
• Security [Encryption Keys]
• Service routes [Firewall/IDS]
• Policies throughout the fabric [Data/App-route Policies]