Nexus Enhanced vPC design issue

[mukesh.patil]

Dear Expert,

I am planning to put enhanced vPC design to get the benefit of enhanced vPC feature to enable the port channel between servers to access nexus switch, please refer attached design document and suggest, if this design supports or not. If not, please suggest any solution to enable server to muti-chassis port channel with less impact to existing design.

Thanks in advance. 

Regards

Mukesh

[Steve Fuller]

Hi Mukesh,

What you're proposing is supported, but is not actually Enhanced vPC. The Enhanced vPC feature is used in a topology where you're connecting a server via vPC to two FEX, and each FEX is then connected via vPC to a pair of Nexus 5K. If the servers are connected directly to the Nexus 5596 as shown then this is simply a normal vPC connection.

See the Configuring Enhanced Virtual Port Channels configuration guide for more detail on Enhanced vPC.

Another excellent reference is the vPC Quick Start guide.  As per the guide:

This Quick Start Guide (QSG) is a Cookbook style guide to Deploying Data Center technologies with end-to-end configurations for several commonly deployed architectures.

One other question comes to mind when I look your diagram, that being is there a specific reason you connect the switch marked N5048 using STP? I'm not sure of the platform, but this could also be connected using vPC and so give you the benefits of additional capacity and a standard configuration throughout.

Regards

[mukesh.patil]

Got it, my design does't stand for enhanced vPC. But can I implement vPC on 5596 without causing any impact to my production environment (other than 5596 switches (vPC switches) as shown in diagram)?

Another question, Will vPC adds any latency compare to traditional non vPC design?

[Steve Fuller]

Correct. Adding additional vPC for your server connections will not impact the vPC that connects to the upstream Nexus 7000.

In terms of latency, vPC will not add any latency over a non vPC design. It may even reduce latency and jitter because all links are forwarding, and as such there may be less queueing on a particular interface.

Regards

[mukesh.patil]

One clarification::

My design is running in production except the 5596, which will be new addition to my network, so can i add those pair of new 5596 in my network with vPC without impacting my rest of production environment??