Milestone 2: Fabric expanded

This is the second milestone checkpoint. The instructor will review what you have completed and answer questions before you move on to connecting services.

✅ Added a new rack — Apstra generated all ASNs, IP addressing, BGP, and EVPN configuration from resource pools, automatically
✅ Created a routing zone (VRF) for the analytics workload with a single name field
✅ Built two virtual networks using VXLAN — one Layer 2 only for a web tier with an external gateway, one Layer 3 for a database tier with integrated routing
✅ Verified the incremental configuration that Apstra staged before each commit

Every step in this section followed the same pattern: you described what you wanted — a new rack, a VRF, a virtual network with certain properties — and Apstra worked out how to implement it across every device in the fabric.

That separation between intent and implementation is what makes Apstra different from conventional automation. You are not scripting individual device configurations. You are defining a network model, and the platform handles the translation.

The fabric has the physical capacity and the network segments it needs. In the next section, you will connect the actual servers that will run the analytics platform, apply connectivity templates to attach them to the correct networks, and stage external BGP peering for customer access.

Ready? Let’s move on!