anchor leaf nodes

ACI uses L3Out to connect to external L3 domains via routing (dynamic routing protocol or static). There are multiple options and tools to optimize the L3Out for effective L3 communications between ACI and external network services. One of those is Floating L3Out.

Floating L3Out enables engineers to configure L3Out without specifying logical interfaces. Floating L3Out makes configuration, management, and troubleshooting easier. Only specific leaf nodes, called anchor leaf nodes establish routing adjacencies with external routers.

Anchor leaf node – is a leaf node that establish route peering / L3 adjacencies with the external routers. As of Cisco ACI release 6.0(1), the verified scalability number of anchor leaf nodes is 6 per L3Out.