Reference Guide

20 Dell EMC PowerEdge MX SmartFabric Deployment Guide
5 Scalable Fabric Architecture overview
A new concept with the PowerEdge MX platform is the Scalable Fabric Architecture. A Scalable Fabric spans
multiple chassis and allows them to behave like a single chassis from a networking perspective.
A Scalable Fabric consists of two main components, a pair of MX9116n FSEs in the first two chassis and
additional pairs of MX7116n FEMs in the remaining chassis. Each MX7116n FEM connects to the MX9116n
FSE corresponding to its fabric and slot. All IOMs participating in the fabric are configured in either Full Switch
or SmartFabric mode.
Figure 13 shows three (expandable to ten) MX7000 chassis in a single Scalable Fabric Architecture. The first
two chassis each contain one MX9116n FSE and one MX7116n FEM. Chassis 3-10 each contain two
MX7116n FEMs. All connections in the figure use QSFP28-DD connections.
Scalable Fabric example using Fabric A
In this document, a Scalable Fabric Architecture is deployed across two PowerEdge MX7000 chassis. Both
MX9116n FSEs operate in SmartFabric mode. This section provides an overview of the management network
and the Scalable Fabric Architecture used in this document.