[c-nsp] Question on the Use of Policy Based Routing

[Zach Williams]

 Hello.  I have a question regarding the use of policy based routing.  I've
always thought of it as a way to selectively change routing in exceptional
circumstances.

I've come across an implementation where it is being used to explicitly set
a next-hop ip for 99% of all traffic headed from an application behind a
pair of of stacked 3750s.  The default route on these layer 3 switches is
set to a 192.168.x.x IP which is part of a management network.  The PBR is
in place to send the outbound application traffic towards a firewall and
out to the internet.

Part of the reasoning for doing this was because the application will
require only a few separate class C's and the management network has many
more routes.  A route-map matching an access-list or prefix-list for the
basis of PBR on the outbound application traffic would contain fewer lines
of configuration and thus it was deemed more elegant to set up PBR for the
application traffic rather than the management traffic.

I'm having a tough time finding best-practices information on the use of
PBR and was wondering what cisco-nsp thought of this setup.