Setup Guide

13 Dell EMC SmartFabric OS10 Switch Configuration Guide for VxRail 4.7
4 VxRail in the data center
4.1 Leaf-spine network
Dell EMC recommends using a leaf-spine network in the data center with leaf switches configured as VLT
peers. The switches and VxRail nodes covered in this guide are shown in Rack 1 in Figure 10 and are
incorporated into a data center’s leaf-spine network.
Rack 1
S5248F-Leaf1A
VLTi
VxRail node n
VxRail node 1
VxRail node 2
Rack n
Leaf-nA Leaf-nB
Spine2Spine1
VLTi
L3
L2
L3
L2
Device connections
VLTi connections
Leaf-spine connections
Layer 2/Layer 3 boundary
Rack 2
Leaf-2A Leaf-2B
VLTi
Additional VxRail clusters, servers,
storage, etc.
Additional VxRail clusters, servers,
storage, etc.
S5248F-Leaf1B
Dual switch topology with VLT connected to a leaf-spine network
In Figure 10, the Layer 2/Layer 3 boundary is at the leafs, meaning traffic within each rack is switched (Layer
2) and traffic between racks is routed (Layer 3). VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center
5.1 - Architecture and Design recommends isolating vSAN traffic to its own Layer 2 VLAN. Therefore, for this
leaf-spine topology, each vSAN should be contained within a single rack. Since a VxRail cluster contains a
vSAN, a VxRail cluster is also contained within a single rack.
Note: By default, VxRail does not enable routing of vSAN or vMotion traffic.
The leaf-spine topology in Figure 10 scales to sixteen racks or more, depending on the number of ports
available in each spine. Racks may contain additional VxRail clusters, switches, servers, storage arrays, and
other devices as needed.
To configure the remainder of the leaf-spine network, including spine switches, connections between leafs
and spines, and routing protocols, see the Dell EMC Networking Layer 3 Leaf-Spine Deployment and Best
Practices with OS10 document.