Deploying 6296UP FI

[Terry MacDougal]

When deploying the 6296 FI is there a best practice regarding the configuration/distribution of Ethernet and FC ports?

Example, we currently are deploying 6 chassis each with 4 Server Uplink ports per I/O module (total 24 ports per FI) and we are leaving some room for expansion in the future.

My question, would it make sense to dedicate all the fixed-ports for Uplink Server ports? Given the fact that the 6296 has 3 expansion modules that can be either Ethernet or FC, should we spread the connections across these cards or does it really matter?

Another example would be an 8-port vPC connection, should these 8 connections be distributed across different expansion modules? Or simply plugged into one???

Thanks

[Robert Burns]

Terry,

These are all great design considerations.  One thing to note on the 6200's, that when you reconfigure ports (change from eth <=> fc, it requires a reboot of the chassis or module - depending which ports are affected - so allocating the fixed chassis as Eth and the expansion modules as FC is not a bad idea.  If you ever need to add another expansion module and require to reconfigure the ports on it - only the module affected has to be reboot.  For this reason we try to advise customers to accurately plan out at least your ethernet requirements so you never have to reconfigure the main chassis with a reboot.  Additionally, each expansion module can be sub-divided into eth/fc ports so you'll always have expansion options. As far as spreading your uplinks across expansion modules I don't think that's really necessary.  With eight member port channels you're going to have the redundancy of being spread across multiple port ASICs, and if the main chassis ever did go down, its taking all the expansion modules with it regardless (very unlikely).

Regards,

Robert