nxos 6 or 7 trains for N9K

[t.houmaiza]

Team,

Could you please point on why one should go for a nxos 7 train instead of 6 train for the N9300s? since  FP,OTV and VDC are missing for N9K what are the key differences in features?

Thank you

[Steve Fuller · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It will depend what you want to do with the Nexus 9000. If you're using the N9K in a fairly small scale environment with perhaps vPC for Layer-2, and some routing at an aggregation layer, then NX-OS 6.2 is probably favourable at this stage as it has greater maturity and field exposure.

If you want a switching platform that can provide an equivalent to FabricPath i.e., Layer-2 adjacency across leaf switches, then when using the Nexus 9000 VXLAN is probably going to be the protocol of choice. For VXLAN support and scalability, one of the biggest additions to the NX-OS 7.0 release is the use of Layer-2 Ethernet VPN (EVPN) using Multi-Protocol BGP as the control plane. In addition you get Anycast gateway support for optimised routing, ARP optimisation etc.

If you're interested in this area, then take a read of the VXLAN Network with MP-BGP EVPN Control Plane white paper which goes into the details.

Regards

[t.houmaiza]

clear thanks Steve