Hi ACI pros,
I have a question regarding the best practice design of the spine IPN connection ports.
Assuming I have two spine switches in a pod. Each spine has two routed connections to the IPN device (e.g. core switches).
Which port IDs do I choose for the IPN links on the spine switches?
If I check the internal architecture of a N9364C, there are four "slices" (i assume one slice contains one forwarding controller). Each port is assigned to one slice.
So if I choose port 63 and 64 for the IPN connections, they are assigned to the same slice (slice 2). So if there is an internal error within one spine switch within slice 2, both IPN links will fail at the same time.
Well, I have another spine node with a redundant IPN connection and redundancy should still be there. But I guess a good design is, that a single failure (e.g. failure of one forwarding controller) won't result into multiple failures (both IPN links are down).
So here's the question: Does it make sense to use for example port 64 (assigned to slice 2) and port 60 (assigned to slice 0) for the IPN connection of one C9364C node?
Thanks,
Johannes
Hi @Johannes Luther,
Well you have done all the hard work! I'm a big fan of this approach. While I've not seen a lot of ASICs failures, I agree with you that its a good idea and I try to do this where possible. I also like the layout from a cabling perspective as it keeps those IPN connections on the bottom right and to the right. I like to put the leafs on the first interfaces and so its clear separation of the cabling and the cabling should not interfere with the other ports on the left side if and when they are needed, which I also like to consider. Finally it puts the IPN links on MACsec ports in case that something you need now or in the future.
