How to define number of Spine leaf's?

[kumarH]

I have below few questions regarding the cisco ACI:

1. How to define the number of spine switches required? Is it just on the basis of leaf count?

2. When to use Baby Spine? Is there any leaf count limitation with baby spine like 9332 and 9336?

[Sergiu.Daniluk]

Hi @kumarH 

There are several factors which could influence the number of spines as well as the type of spines:

1. Total throughput (bandwidth)

2. Number of Leafs in each pod (this actually influence the total throughput in the fabric, so back to #1)

3. Level of redundancy and resiliency

Regarding your second query, this might help you: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/4-x/verified-scalability/Cisco-ACI-Verified-Scalability-Guide-412.html

The number of leafs in a pod/fabric is not dependent of number of spines, but rather the total number of APICs.

Also important note to remember: Maximum spines per pod: 6.

Stay safe,

Sergiu