The VMware SDWAN describes at least three different branch topologies, which are called Bronze, Silver, and Gold. At a branch site, two pairs of SD-WAN Edges can also be configured in a High Availability (HA) configuration.
Topology of the Bronze Site
The Bronze topology is a typical deployment for a small site, which consists of one or two wide area network (WAN) links that are connected to the public internet. On the local area network (LAN) side of the SD-WAN Edge, there is no MPLS connection and there is no L3 switch in the Bronze topology. An overview of the Bronze topology is presented in the figure that was just presented.
Topology of Silver Sites
At a site with the silver topology, there is at least one public Internet link as well as an MPLS connection. This shape comes in two different forms.
One type has a single L3 switch that connects to at least one public internet link and an MPLS link. The MPLS link ends on a CE and can be reached through the L3 switch. The SD-WAN Edge is placed between the L3 switch and the Internet in this case, taking the place of the firewall or router that is already there.
An L2 switch is installed on the local area network (LAN) side of the second variant, which consists of MPLS and Internet routers that are deployed with either Cisco’s Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) utilizing a different router vendor. In this particular scenario, the L2 switch is replaced by the SD-WAN Edge.
