Deployment Guide

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8 Scaling VCF Domains Beyond a Single MX7000 Chassis | Document ID
3 Dell Scalable Fabric Architecture
A Scalable Fabric spans multiple chassis and enables them to behave like a single chassis from a networking
perspective. In contrast, an MCM group enables multiple chassis to be managed like a pool of chassis
resources.
A Scalable Fabric consists of two main components - one MX9116n FSE and one MX7116n FEM in each of
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. This hardware-enabled architecture
applies regardless of whether the switch is running in Full Switch or SmartFabric mode. All IOMs participating
in the fabric are configured in either Full Switch or SmartFabric mode.
Each chassis can physically contain two general-purpose network fabrics, A, and B. Each of these fabrics has
two IOM slots available; A1 and A2, and B1 and B2. Each of the A or B fabrics can be configured
independently. You could use Full Switch Mode or SmartFabric for either or both of the A or B network fabrics
in the chassis.
The UI is used to configure the switches SmartFabric mode, and the OS10 CLI is used for switch
configuration in Full Switch mode. Full switch mode offers a granularly configurable method that exposes the
manual configuration of every possible feature of the switch. A switch in SmartFabric mode allows fewer
options but allows configuration parameters to be reused and to be deployed quickly and consistently.
3.1 Full Switch Mode
Full Switch Mode allows the MX9116n FSEs to be manually configured as switches. In Full Switch mode, all
SmartFabric OS10 features and functions that are supported by the hardware are available to the user. In
other words, the switch operates the same way as any other SmartFabric OS10 switch. Configuration is done
using the CLI.
3.2 SmartFabric
SmartFabric allows the creation and deployment of network settings (VLANs, MTU, QoS) to the compute
sleds and creating VLT enabled uplinks to the spine or aggregation layer. SmartFabric contains the following
components:
• Networks
• Fabric
• Uplinks
• Templates
• Deployment
3.2.1 Networks
Networks are defined and identify the VLANs that are to be applied to the ports of the FSEs and any
connected FEMs. Networks can be applied to both the Uplinks and to the ports on the FSE that connect to the
compute sleds. Networks contain:
• Name
• Description
• VLAN ID