Connecting to Virtual Connect FlexFabric at 1Gb bandwidths

[chuckk281]

Davin had a customer connection question:

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I have a customer who is looking to connect Virtual Connect FlexFabric modules into their existing networking environment. At the moment they only have 1GB Ethernet and 4GB FC. They are trying to run 2 X FC uplinks from the modules and 6 X RJ45 SFP Ethernet uplinks from each module. Is this supported? Any of the documentation that I have seen seem to indicate that ports X1 to X4 are only for FC or 10GB.

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Chris replied:

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It’s  X5-X8 uplink ports that will support SFP or SFP+ transceivers.  The max you could get is 4Gb, with X5-X8 populated with 1Gb SFP transceivers.  You will then need to use an external 10Gb DAC cable to connect either X3 or X4 to the adjacent FlexFabric modules for the stack link (which is required.)  So, that could give you 8Gb of throughput between the two modules - assuming you created two SUS’s or vNets for an Active/Active design.  I would suggest recommending that NFT NIC teaming is used.  That way, you have half of the servers using the uplinks from Bay 1, and the other half using the uplinks from Bay 2.  Of course, assuming a fully populated enclosure.

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Other comments or suggestions?