Setup Guide

26 Dell EMC PowerEdge MX SmartFabric Configuration and Troubleshooting Guide
4 Creating a SmartFabric
The general steps required to create a SmartFabric are:
1. Physically cable the MX chassis and upstream switches.
2. Define the VLANs.
3. Create the SmartFabric.
4. If needed, configure uplink port speed and breakout.
5. Create the Ethernet uplink.
6. Configure the upstream switch and connect uplink cables.
These steps make the following assumptions:
• All MX7000 chassis and management modules are cabled correctly and in a Multi-Chassis
Management group.
• The VLTi cables between switches have been connected.
NOTE: All server, network, and chassis hardware has been updated to the latest firmware. See Appendix E
for
the minimum recommended firmware versions.
4.1 Physically cable MX chassis and upstream switches
The first step in creating the SmartFabric is to cable the MX chassis and upstream switches.
• For Management Module cabling, see PowerEdge MX9002m Module Cabling
.
• For VLTi cabling of different IOM placements, see Figure 5, Figure 6, and Figure 7.
For information on cabling the MX chassis to the upstream switches, see the example topologies in
Scenario
1, Scenario 2 and Scenario 3 in this document.
For further information on cabling in general, see Dell EMC PowerEdge MX Networking Architecture Guide
and Dell EMC PowerEdge MX Series Fibre Channel Storage Network Deployment with Ethernet IOMs Guide.
4.2 Define VLANs
Before creating the SmartFabric, the initial set of VLANs should be created. The first VLAN to be created
should be the default, or native VLAN, typically VLAN 1. The default VLAN must be created for any untagged
traffic to cross the fabric.
To define VLANs using the OME-M console, perform the following steps:
1. Open the OME-M console.
2. From the navigation menu, click Configuration > Networks.
3. In the Network pane, click Define.
4. In the Define Network window, complete the following:
a. Enter a name for the VLAN in the Name box. In this example, VLAN0010 was used.
b. Optionally, enter a description in the Description box. In this example, the description was
entered as “Company A General Purpose”.
c. Enter the VLAN number in the VLAN ID box. In this example, 10 was entered.
d. From the Network Type list, select the desired network type. In this example, General
Purpose (Bronze) was used.
e. Click Finish.