Fabric-Site vs Fabric in a Box

[Xividar]

Hi Guys,

Operationally, and feature set wise, are there any differenes between a Fabric-Site and Fabric in a Box. My main area of thought is Wireless. Can I still have a centralised WLC that supports a distribted campus? I.E, lots of Fabric-Sites and Fabric in Boxes.

Cheers

[Dan Rowe]

Fabric in a Box or 'FiaB' is a type of device which can be provisioned to a Fabric-site. Fabric in a box is essentially one device which is provisioned as an Edge node, Border node, and Control Plane node. Some devices which support being provisioned as a FiaB can even take it one step further by adding embedded wireless capabilities to the FiaB. 

[OaklandCounty_Mike]

We are large consumers of the FIAB configuration. We use it so we don't expose the vlans from our main campus site to our partner / WAN locations.  we have recently found out and are currently testing the embedded wireless controller on my 9300s because this feature is required to utilize wireless at the FIAB sites.  

[anthony.wild]

We are also using FIAB extensively, even beyond the published/advertised limits with a number of subtended edge and even policy extended nodes. We also enable the eWLC functionality and provision the APs in fabric mode to the FIAB. We have not hit any performance limitations, even upwards of 1000+ endpoints.

[balaji.bandi]

thats very intresting, yes its all depends on use case and client usage, if simple usage yes that should work. Cat 9K has good chipset so it can handle

but good to know your input.

[John.Mayer]

Hi everyone
quick question: I know that for FAIB, the recommended topology is to use one logical switch (switch stacking), but can we use two logical switches in the FIAB role (have two separate switch stacks), and connect a couple of edge nodes to both of them (dual-homing)

[OaklandCounty_Mike]

John,

at some of our FIAB sites, we have additional edge switches hanging off the main head switch which is performing all 3 roles.  But I don’t believe you can have more than one switch or stack performing all three roles at once.

[John.Mayer]

thanks for reply
my consideration here is that my customer wants to have two separate switches instead of using the switch stack

[OaklandCounty_Mike]

Gotcha. We actually never stack our closet switches.

I would just connect your second switch on the underlay for that FIAB site and give it the role of edge. You should be all set.

[jedolphi]

We can have two FIABs in a fabric site. The FIABs can be standalone switches or stack or SVL. I would avoid dual FIAB with LISP/BGP fabric, the routing becomes too complicated. LISP Pub/Sub fabric makes it easier to accomplish dual FIAB. Even easier again is FIAB + separate Edge Node since the BN routing becomes relatively simple.

[Mahmoud]

Hi @jedolphi 

could you elaborate more about this recommendation , I have two separate stacks at different floors and plan to use FAIB.

[jedolphi]

Hi Mahmoud, what in particular do you want to know? "Elaborate" is a very broad request!

[Mahmoud]

I mean if you could share best practice to use this setup "connect separate stacks in one FAIB".

[jedolphi]

The only use case I know of for dual FIAB site is where a customer must have WAN1 connect to FIAB1 and WAN2 connect to FIAB2. This is a more complex design, but it is supported. In this case the best recommendation I can give is to use the LISP Pub/Sub control plane architecture with Catalyst Center 2.3.7.9+.

If the WAN can be connected to just one switch/stack then the better design option is to use 1x FIAB (terminating one or more WAN links) and separate Edge Nodes (not 2x FIAB!) because it keeps the routing much simpler.

[OaklandCounty_Mike]

I agree. Most of our FIAB sites are a single switch with a WAN link in it.
It is simple enough. We are using LISP/BGP control plane. We were told we cannot brownfield convert between LISP/BGP to a LISP Pub/Sub model.
For us LISP/BGP works so we are not rocking the boat