Creating a peer group in the console

To create a peer group in the console, follow these steps:

1. From your browser, open the IBM Cloud console and log in to your account.

2. Select the Navigation menu , and then click Infrastructure > Network > Dynamic route servers.

3. In the list, select the row of the dynamic route server that you want to work with, and then click Create peer group +.

4. Enter a name for the peer group, such as my-peer-group.

5. Select one of the following peer roles:

   • Router - Use this role when the peer exchanges routes with the dynamic route server by using BGP. Suitable for routers, firewalls, SD-WAN devices that advertise and learn routes.

   • Next hop - Use this role when the peer is only a forwarding target, not a route source. Suitable for firewalls or appliances through which traffic must flow, but that don't need to advertise routes.

     Transit gateway peer groups can be set up only from the Transit Gateway service. For more information, see Adding a connection.

6. Select one of the following health monitor modes:

   • BGP - Uses BGP session state to determine peer health. When the peer goes down, it automatically removes routes that use this peer as the next hop.
   • BFD over BGP - Uses Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) with BGP to monitor peer connectivity. Provides faster failure detection and quicker route withdrawal, more suitable for next-hop devices.
   • None (Next-hop only) - Disables peer health monitoring. Connectivity failures aren't automatically detected.

7. Enable the peer group state to establish a BGP session with peers in the peer group.

Creating a peer group from the CLI

To create a peer group for the dynamic route server from the CLI, follow these steps:

1. Set up your CLI environment.

2. Log in to your CLI environment. After you enter the password, the system prompts which account and region that you want to use:

   ibmcloud login --sso
   

3. Enable the following feature flag:

   export IBMCLOUD_IS_FEATURE_DYNAMIC_ROUTE_SERVER=true
   

4. Run the following command:

   ibmcloud is dynamic-route-server-peer-group-create DYNAMIC_ROUTE_SERVER (--roles next_hop | router | next_hop,router) (--peers PEERS_JSON | @PEERS_JSON_FILE) (--health-monitor-roles next_hop | router) [--health-monitor-mode bfd | bgp | none] [--name NAME] [--state disabled | enabled] [--excluded-prefixes EXCLUDED_PREFIXES_JSON | @EXCLUDED_PREFIXES_JSON_FILE] [--monitored-prefixes MONITORED_PREFIXES_JSON | @MONITORED_PREFIXES_JSON_FILE] [--output JSON] [-q, --quiet]
   

Where:

DYNAMIC_ROUTE_SERVER

The dynamic route server identifier.

--roles

A comma-separated list of peer group roles. One of: next_hop, router, or next_hop,router.

--peers

A JSON array that defines the peers. You can specify a minimum of one and a maximum of six peers. You can also add peers separately. For more information, see Attaching a peer to a peer group.

@PEERS_JSON_FILE

A file that contains the peers JSON payload.

--health-monitor-roles

A comma-separated list of roles for the health monitor configuration. One of: next_hop or router.

--health-monitor-mode

The health monitor mode. For the next_hop role, the options are bfd (default), bgp, or none. For the router role, the options are bfd or bgp (default).

--name

The name of the peer group.

--state

The peer group state. One of: disabled or enabled. The default is enabled.

--excluded-prefixes

A JSON array of CIDR prefixes to exclude from monitoring.

@EXCLUDED_PREFIXES_JSON_FILE

A file that contains the excluded prefixes JSON payload.

--monitored-prefixes

A JSON array of CIDR prefixes to monitor.

@MONITORED_PREFIXES_JSON_FILE

A file that contains the monitored prefixes JSON payload.

--output

Output in JSON format.

-q, --quiet

Suppresses verbose output.

After you create a peer group, attach a peer and create a peer group policy. For more information, see Attaching a peer to a peer group and Creating a peer group policy.

Creating a peer group with the API

To create a peer group with the API, follow these steps:

1. Set up your API environment with the required variables.

2. Store any additional variables to use in the API commands. For example:

   • ResourceGroupId - Find the resource group ID by using the get resource groups command and then populate the variable:

   export ResourceGroupId=<your_resourcegroup_id>
   

3. When all variables are set, create the peer group.

   • To create a peer group with one to six peers, run the following command:

   curl -X POST \
     "$vpc_api_endpoint/v1/dynamic_route_servers/DRS_ID/peer_groups?version=$api_version&generation=2" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $iam_token" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
       "name": "my-peer-group",
       "state": "enabled",
       "roles": ["next_hop", "router"],
       "health_monitor": {
         "mode": "bfd",
         "roles": ["next_hop"]
       },
       "peers": [
         {
           "name": "my-peer",
           "asn": 64520,
           "priority": 1,
           "endpoint": {
             "address": "10.40.38.2",
             "gateway": {
               "address": "10.30.40.5"
             }
           }
         }
       ]
     }'
   

After you create a peer group, attach a peer and create a peer group policy. For more information, see Attaching a peer to a peer group and Creating a peer group policy.