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# Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

A VRF object in Nautobot represents a virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) domain. Each VRF is essentially a separate routing table. VRFs are commonly used to isolate customers or organizations from one another within a network, or to route overlapping address space (e.g. multiple instances of the 10.0.0.0/8 space). Each VRF may be assigned to a specific tenant to aid in organizing the available IP space by customer or internal user.

Each VRF is assigned a unique name and an optional route distinguisher (RD). The RD is expected to take one of the forms prescribed in RFC 4364, however its formatting is not strictly enforced.

Each prefix and IP address may be assigned to one (and only one) VRF. If you have a prefix or IP address which exists in multiple VRFs, you will need to create a separate instance of it in Nautobot for each VRF. Any prefix or IP address not assigned to a VRF is said to belong to the "global" table.

By default, Nautobot will allow duplicate prefixes to be assigned to a VRF. This behavior can be toggled by setting the "enforce unique" flag on the VRF model.

Note

Enforcement of unique IP space can be toggled for global table (non-VRF prefixes) using the `ENFORCE_GLOBAL_UNIQUE` configuration setting.

Each VRF may have one or more import and/or export route targets applied to it. Route targets are used to control the exchange of routes (prefixes) among VRFs in L3VPNs.