Users Guide
Table Of Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 SmartFabric Services for PowerEdge MX: An overview
- 3 SmartFabric mode requirements, guidelines, and restrictions
- 3.1 Create multi-chassis management group
- 3.2 Upstream network requirements
- 3.3 VLAN scaling guidelines
- 3.4 Configuring port speed and breakout
- 3.5 Switch slot placement for SmartFabric mode
- 3.6 Switch-to-Switch cabling
- 3.7 NIC teaming guidelines
- 3.8 Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) behavior
- 3.9 Other restrictions and guidelines
- 4 Creating a SmartFabric
- 4.1 Physically cable MX chassis and upstream switches
- 4.2 Define VLANs
- 4.3 Create the SmartFabric
- 4.4 Configure uplink port speed or breakout, if needed
- 4.5 Create Ethernet uplink
- 4.6 Configure Fibre Channel universal ports
- 4.7 Create Fibre Channel uplinks
- 4.8 Configuring the upstream switch and connect uplink cables
- 5 Deploying a server
- 6 SmartFabric operations
- 7 Switch operations
- 8 Validating the SmartFabric deployment
- 9 SmartFabric troubleshooting
- 9.1 Troubleshooting errors encountered for port group breakout
- 9.2 Troubleshooting Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
- 9.3 Verify VLT/vPC configuration on upstream switches
- 9.4 Discovery of FEM and compute sleds
- 9.5 Troubleshooting uplink errors
- 9.6 Troubleshooting FC/FCoE
- 9.7 SmartFabric Services – Troubleshooting commands
- 10 Uplink configuration scenarios
- 10.1 Scenario 1 - SmartFabric deployment with Dell EMC PowerSwitch Z9100-ON upstream switches
- 10.2 Scenario 2 - SmartFabric connected to Cisco Nexus 3232C switches
- 10.3 Scenario 3: Connect MX9116n FSE to Fibre Channel storage - NPIV Proxy Gateway mode
- 10.4 Scenario 4: Connect MX9116n FSE to Fibre Channel storage - FC Direct Attach
- 10.5 Scenario 5: Connect MX5108n to Fibre Channel storage - FSB
- 10.6 Scenario 6: Configure Boot from SAN
- A Hardware used in this document
- B Dell EMC Unity information
- C Additional information
- D Validated components
- E Technical resources
- F Support and feedback
13 Dell EMC PowerEdge MX SmartFabric Configuration and Troubleshooting Guide
3. Fabric automation
• Physical topology compliance
• Server networking managed via templates
• Automated QoS assignment per VLAN
• Automated storage networking
4. Failure remediation
• Dynamically adjusts bandwidth across all inter-switch links in the event of a link failure
• Automatically detects fabric misconfigurations or link level failure conditions
• Automatically heals the fabric on failure condition removal
Note: In SmartFabric mode, MX series switches operate entirely as a Layer 2 network fabric. Layer 3 protocols
are not supported.
When operating in SmartFabric mode, access to certain CLI commands is restricted to SmartFabric OS10
show commands and can run the following subset of CLI configuration commands:
• clock – Configure clock parameters
• end – Exit to the EXEC mode
• exit – Exit from the current mode
• fc alias – Set Fiber Channel name
• fc zone – Set Fiber Channel zone name
• fc zoneset – Set Fiber Channel zoneset name
• help – Display available commands
• hostname – Set the system hostname
• host-description – Define the description for the host
• interface – Configure or select an interface
• ip nameserver – Configure nameserver
• ip ssh server – Configure SSH server
• ip telnet server – Configure Telnet server
• login concurrent-session – Start concurrent session and login
• login statistics – Enable timeframe for the login session
• logging – Configure system logging
• management route – Configure the IPV4/IPv6 management route
• no – Delete or disable commands in configuration mode
• ntp – Configure the network time protocol
• snmp-server – Configure the SNMP server
• tacacs-server – Configure the TACACS server
• username – Create or modify user credentials
• spanning-tree commands:
- disable – Disable spanning tree globally
- mac-flush-timer – Set the time used to flush MAC address entries
- mode – Enable a spanning-tree mode, such as RSTP