Ahead IT

Nexus Feature – Fabric Path April 6, 2011 In yet another of several papers discussing the attributes of Cisco’s Nexus product line, this paper will discuss the characteristics of FabricPath (FP). Most modern data centers require some form of L-2 accessibility throughout the location.  Partly this is due to some applications requiring L2 connectivity (think VMotion), and partially to ease network implementation and configuration.  If each rack within a data center was configured on a separate IP address the configuration of a server would have to be changed if they were to be moved around the data center.  In addition, the DNS/IP relationships would have to be proactively managed.  This would require the coordination of multiple teams (network, server, application, storage, etc.).  To counter this, ...

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The Nexus 7000, 5000, 5500, 2000, and the 1000 devices comprise the current chassis types within the Nexus family.  Each contributes key aspects to the overall capabilities found within this cutting edge family of network hardware.  Below is a breakdown of the current hardware abilities of the Nexus 7000 chassis The 7000 currently comes in two forms.  The 7010, 10-slot chassis, and the 7018, 18-slot chassis. Chassis Types: 7010: The 7010 chassis is a cutting edge core chassis designed for high bandwidth, low-latency, next-generation network topologies.  Every attempt has been made to make this a future proof chassis for evolving technologies and physical layer exchange of data. 10-Slots: 1-4 and 7-10 are line card slots, 5-6 are supervisory ...

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Nexus Feature – vPC (virtual Port Channel) March 28, 2011 The concept of Port-Channels (PC), or Ether-Channel bundles, has been around for quite some time.  One of the major limits of a PC was that the connections were always point to point.  In a normal configuration two PC’s per access switch would be configured, one per distribution switch, to provide redundancy and fault tolerance.  In addition Rapid Spanning Tree (RSTP) was required to ensure a loop free topology between the access switch and the distribution switches.  With RSTP only one of the two PC uplinks would be active at any one time.  This limited the available bandwidth that would otherwise be available.  An example of this configuration is shown below.  Read More