Nexus 5500 and FEX Port-channel

Pablo Vicencio · ‎10-29-2013

Team,

I have been starting to read a lot of this tech but I still have some doubts regarding port-channel limits in my platform.

So this is my current set up:

- 1 Nexus N5K-C5596UP

- 2 Fabric Extenders N2K-C2148T-1GE.

Currently the Fabric Extenders are connected to the C5596UP, and they have been attached correctly, and everything is working fine:

LAB# show fex

FEX FEX FEX FEX

Number Description State Model Serial

------------------------------------------------------------------------

110 FEX0100 Online N2K-C2148T-1GE FOX123455666

120 FEX0200 Online N2K-C2148T-1GE FOX123123234

I have been reading this DOC:

There I read that:

- There are differences between Nexus 5000 and 5500 mostly because port density of 5500.

- There are something called "index" which have a limitation of 48.

- In 5500 every single port can be a port-channel itself.

- Those index can be used either by using a single port, several ports or bundles of ports.

- If the nexus use one of their hardware ports it will use one index.

- On the other hand, If the nexus doesnt use its hardware ports, It won't use those index.

- The document also describes that if the port-channel just use FEX ports, it won't use an index.

I also read this document that describes limitations of interfaces per bundle up to 16.

So after of read that I still have some questions:

1. If I configure port-channels just using fex ports, I wont use indexes but, there are still limitations on it?.

2. How many port-channels can be configured on a single FEX?

3. How many port-channels can be configured if I am using ports that belongs to diferent FEX?.

4. How many port-channels can be configured using hardware ports?

5. How can I check how many available indexes left?

6. There is a limitation of port-channels based on version?

7. 16 ports as limit applies to every port-channel configured?

Thank you for all your support.

Pablo.