Virtual Port Channeling in NXOS

Vivian Hu
Cisco China TAC
11. 07

© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 1
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
–vPC Concept & Benefits
–How does vPC help with STP?
–vPC Terminology
–Data-Plane Loop Avoidance with vPC
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
 vPC Feature Overview
vPC Concept & Benefits
L2
Si Si Si Si Si Si Si

Physical Topology Logical Topology

Non-vPC vPC

Bi-sectional Bandwidth with vPC Virtual Port Channel

 vPC is a Port-channeling concept
extending link aggregation to two
separate physical switches
 Allows the creation of resilient L2
topologies based on Link Aggregation.
 Enable seamless VM Mobility,
Server HA Clusters
 Scale Available Layer 2 Bandwidth
 Maintains independent control plane

 Eliminate STP blocked ports and uses all  Provide fast convergence upon
link/device failure
 vPC – Feature Overview
Multi-Chassis EtherChannel (MCEC)
vPC Peers
 Available on Nexus 3000, 5000/5500,
6000 and 7000
 Available in NX-OS 4.1(3)N1+ on the
Nexus 5000 & 4.1(3)+ on the Nexus 7000 MCEC
vPC Peers

MCEC

! Enable vpc on the switch

dc11-5020-1(config)# feature vpc

! Check the feature status

dc11-5020-1(config)# show feature | include vpc
vpc 1 enabled
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
–vPC Concept & Benefits
–How does vPC help with STP?
–vPC Terminology
–Data-Plane Loop Avoidance with vPC
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
 Feature Overview
How does vPC help with STP? (1 of 2)
Primary Secondary
• Before vPC Root Root
– STP blocks redundant uplinks
– VLAN based load balancing
– Loop Resolution relies on STP

• With vPC
– No blocked uplinks
– EtherChannel load balancing (hash)
– Loop Free Topology

   
 Feature Overview
How does vPC help with STP? (2 of 2)
• Reuse existing infrastructure

smooth migration
• Build Loop-Free Networks
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
–vPC Concept & Benefits
–How does vPC help with STP?
–vPC Terminology
–Data-Plane Loop Avoidance with vPC
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
 Feature Overview
vPC Terminology (1 of 2)
• vPC Domain — A pair of vPC switches
vPC Domain
vPC peer-link • vPC Peer—a vPC switch, one of
a pair
• vPC member port—one of a set
vPC peer of ports (port channels) that form
vPC a vPC
vPC
vPC
member
member • vPC—the combined port channel
port
port between the vPC peers and the
vPC
vPC downstream device
member
port • vPC peer-link—link used to synchronize
state between vPC peer devices, must
be 10GE
 Feature Overview
vPC Terminology (2 of 2)
• vPC peer-keepalive link—the keepalive
vPC Peer-keepalive link
link between vPC peer devices
CFS protocol

• vPC VLAN—Any of the VLANs carried

over the peer-link and used to
communicate via vPC with a
peer device

• non-vPC VLAN—Any of the STP VLANs

not carried over the peer-link

• CFS—Cisco Fabric Services protocol,

used for state synchronization and
 Agenda
• Feature Overview
–vPC Concept & Benefits
–How does vPC help with STP?
–vPC Terminology
–Data-Plane Loop Avoidance with vPC
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
 Feature Overview
Data-Plane Loop Avoidance with vPC

STP Domain
vPC Domain

STP Failure


Data-Plane vs. Control-Plane Loop control

vPC peers can forward all vpc traffic locally
Orphan traffic can traverse the peer link
Non-orphan traffic on the Peer-link is marked and not allowed to egress on a vPC
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 VPC Supported Hardware For Your
Reference
Nexus 7000 vPC Peer-link
I/O Module VPC Interfaces
(10 GE Only)

N7K-M132XP-12
N7K-M132XP-12L ✓ ✓
N7K-M148GT-11
N7K-M148GT-11L
N7K-M148GS-11 ✗ ✓
N7K-M148GS-11L

N7K-M108X2-12L ✓ ✓

N7K-F132XP-15 ✓ ✓

N7K-F248XP-25 ✓ ✓
vPC Supported Hardware
NEXUS 5000/5500 For Your
Reference

vPC Peer-link
Part Number / Chassis VPC Member Port
(10 GE Only)
N5K-C5010P-BF
✓ ✓

N5K-C5020P-BF
✓ ✓

N5K-C5548P-FA ✓ ✓

N5K-C5548UP-FA ✓ ✓

N5K-C5596UP-FA
✓ ✓
vPC supported hardware
NEXUS 2000 platform For Your
Reference
VPC Member Port
vPC
Part Number FEX Peer-link
NEXUS 5000 NEXUS 7000
parent switch parent switch

N2K-C2148T-1GE
✗ ✓ ✗
N2K-C2224TP-1GE N2K- ✗ ✓ ✓
C2248TP-1GE
N2K-C2232PP-10GE
✗ ✓ ✓
N2K-C2232TM-10GE
✗ ✓ ✓
N2K-B22-HP
✗ ✓ ✓
N2K-C2248TP-E-1GE
✗ ✓ ✓
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 Building a vPC Domain
Configuration Steps
Following steps are needed to build a vPC
(Order does Matter!)
• Define domains*
• Establish Peer Keepalive connectivity 1 2 3 4
• Create a Peer link
• Reuse port-channels and Create vPCs
• Make Sure Configurations are Consistent 5 6 7 8

vPC member
Routed Interface
Host Port
 Building a vPC Domain vPC Domain 10
vPC Domains
• vPC Domain defines the grouping of
switches participating in the vPC
• Provides for definition of global vPC
vPC Domain 20
system parameters
• The vPC peer devices use the vPC
domain ID to automatically assign a
unique vPC system MAC address
• You MUST utilize unique Domain id’s
for all vPC pairs
! Configure defined
the vPC Domainin
IDa –contiguous
It should be unique within the layer 2 domain
NX-1(config)# vpc domain 20
layer 2 domain
! Check the vPC system MAC address
NX-1# show vpc role
<snip>
vPC System MAC identifies the Logical
vPC system-mac : 00:23:04:ee:be:14 Switch in the network topology
 vPC – Virtual Port Channel
Independent Control Plane + Synchronized L2 State
 LACP neighbor sees the same System ID from both vPC peers
 The vPC ‘system-mac’ is used by both vPC peers
7K_1# shvpc role 7K_2 # shvpc role
<snip> <snip>
vPC system-mac : 00:23:04:ee:be:14 vPC system-mac : 00:23:04:ee:be:14
vPC system-priority : 1024 vPC system-priority : 1024
vPC local system-mac : 00:0d:ec:a4:53:3c vPC local system-mac : 00:0d:ec:a4:5f:7c
vPC local role-priority : 1024 vPC local role-priority : 32667
7K_1 7K_2

Regular (non vPC)

Port Channel 1/4 1/5 1/1 1/2
MCEC (vPC)
dc11-4948-1 5K_2
EtherChannel
5K_2#sh lacp neighbor
<snip>
LACP port Admin Oper Port Port
Port Flags Priority Dev ID Age key Key Number State
Gi1/1 SA 32768 0023.04ee.be14 9s 0x0 0x801E 0x4104 0x3D
Gi1/2 SA 32768 0023.04ee.be14 21s 0x0 0x801E 0x104 0x3D
 vPC – Virtual Port Channel
Independent Control Plane + Synchronized L2 State
 vPC peers function as independent devices as well as peers
 Local ‘system-mac’is used for all non vPC PDUs (LACP, STP, …)
7k_1 # sh vpc role
<snip>
vPC system-mac : 00:23:04:ee:be:14
vPC system-priority : 1024
vPC local system-mac : 00:0d:ec:a4:53:3c 7K_1 7K_2
vPC local role-priority : 1024

Regular (non vPC)

Port Channel 1/4 1/5 1/1 1/2

5K_2 MCEC (vPC)

dc11-4948--2 EtherChannel
dc11-4948-2#sh lacp neighbor
<snip>
LACP port Admin Oper Port Port
Port Flags Priority Dev ID Age key Key Number State
Gi1/4 SA 32768 000d.eca4.533c 8s 0x0 0x1D 0x108 0x3D
Gi1/5 SA 32768 000d.eca4.533c 8s 0x0 0x1D 0x108 0x3D
 Virtual Port Channel (vPC)
vPC Roles vPC Domain 10
• vPC primary switch election is based on role Dual Layer VPC
priority
• Lower priority wins if not, lower system mac
wins
• Role is non-preemptive, So operational Role is vPC Domain 20
what matters
• Operational Role may different from the
priorities configured under the domain
• vPC Role defines which of the two vPC peers
processes BPDUs
• Role matters for the behavior with peer-linkPrimary (but may be
Operational Secondary) Secondary (but may be
failures! Operational Primary)
dc11-5020-3(config-vpc-domain)# role priority ?
<1-65535> Specify priority value

dc11-5020-3# sh vpc
<snip>
vPC role : secondary, operational primary
 Building a vPC Domain
vPC peer-link

vPC Peer-Link
• Definition:
–Standard 802.1Q Trunk
–Carries CFS (Cisco Fabric Services) messages
–Carries flooded traffic from the vPC peer
–Carries STP BPDUs, HSRP Hellos, IGMP updates, etc.
• Requirements:
–Peer-Link member ports must be 10GE interfaces :
- 32 port 10GE fibre card (M1 or F1 series) or 8 port 10GE-X2 M1 modules or 48 port 10GE F2
–- any 10G port on NEXUS 5000/5500 series
–vPC Peer-link must be a point-to-point connection (No other device between the vPC peers)

Recommendations (strong ones!)

–Minimum 2x 10GE ports
(on NEXUS 7000 : use 2 separate cards for best resiliency)
 Building a vPC Domain vPC peer-

• Definition: vPC Peer-Keepalive link keepalive link

–Heartbeat between vPC peers

–Active/Active detection (in case vPC Peer-Link is down)
–Non- fatal to the operation of VPC

NEXUS 7000 NEXUS 5000/5500

Recommendations (in order of 1-preference):
1- Dedicated link(s) (1GE LC) mgmt0 interface (along with
management traffic)
2- mgmt0 interface (along with 2- Dedicated link(s) (1/10GE front panel ports)
management traffic)
3- As last resort, can be routed over L3 infrastructure

vPC Peer-Keepalive messages should NOT be routed over the vPC Peer-Link
 Building a vPC Domain
vPC Peer-Keepalive link up & vPC Peer-Link down

vPC peer-link failure (link loss):

P
vPC Peer-keepalive
S
• Check active status of the remote
vPC peer via vPC peer-keepalive
link (heartbeat)
vPC_PLink
Suspend secondary • If both peers are active, then
vPC Member Ports
Secondary vPC peer will disable all
vPC1 vPC2
vPCs to avoid Dual-Active scenario
SW3 SW4
• Data will automatically forward
down remaining active port
channel ports
P Primary vPC Keepalive Heartbeat
S Secondary vPC
 Virtual Port Channel - vPC vPC Domain 10
vPC Control Plane - Consistency Check
 Both switches in the vPC Domain maintain
distinct control planes
 CFS provides for protocol state
synchronization between both peers (MAC vPC Domain 20
Address table, IGMP state, …)
 System configuration must be kept in sync
 Two types of interface consistency checks
 Type 1 – Will suspend interfaces to
prevent invalid forwarding of packets. With
Graceful Consistency check only ports on
secondary switch will suspend
 Type 2 – Error messages to indicate
potential for undesired forwarding behavior
vPC – Virtual Port Channel
vPC Control Plane – Type 1 Consistency Check
 Type 1 Consistency Checks are
intended to prevent network failures
 Incorrectly forwarding of traffic
 Physical network incompatibilities
dc11-5020-1#
vPC will shberunsuspended
int po 201 dc11-5020-2# sh run int po 201

interface port-channel201 interface port-channel201

switchport mode trunk switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk native vlan 100 switchport trunk native vlan 100
switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-105 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-105
vpc 201 vpc 201
spanning-tree port type network spanning-tree port type network
dc11-5020-2# show vpc brief
spanning-tree guard root
Legend:
(*) - local vPC is down, forwarding via vPC peer-link
<snip>
vPC status
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
id Port Status Consistency Reason Active vlans
------ ----------- ------ ----------- -------------------------- -----------
201 Po201 up failed vPC type-1 configuration -
incompatible - STP
vPC – Virtual Port Channel
vPC Control Plane – Type 2 Consistency Check
 Type 2 Consistency Checks are
intended to prevent undesired
forwarding
 vPC will be modified in certain cases
(e.g. VLAN mismatch)
dc11-5020-1# sh run int po 201 dc11-5020-2# sh run int po 201
version 4.1(3)N1(1) version 4.1(3)N1(1)

interface port-channel201 interface port-channel201

switchport mode trunk switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk native vlan 100 switchport trunk native vlan 100
switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-105 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-104
vpc 201 vpc 201
dc11-5020-1# show
spanning-tree vpctype
port brief vpc 201
network spanning-tree port type network

vPC status
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
id Port Status Consistency Reason Active vlans
------ ----------- ------ ----------- -------------------------- -----------
201 Po201 up success success 100-104
 Building a vPC Domain
VDC Interaction
• VDCs are virtual instances of a device running on the Nexus 7000
• vPC works seamlessly in any VDC based environment
• Each VDC can have its own vPC domain (one vPC domain per VDC is allowed)
• Separate vPC Peer-link and Peer-keepalive link infrastructure for each VDC
deployed
• Using 2 VDCs on the same N7K to form a vPC domain is not supported
Core Core1 Core2 L3 L3 Channel
L3 link
L2 Channel
L2 link
Aggregation
SW-1a vPC SW-1b SW-1a vPC SW-1b SW-2a vPC SW-2b SW-2a
VDC2
vPC SW-2b L3
VDC1 VDC1 VDC2 VDC2 VDC1 VDC2
VDC1
L2
Access vPC vPC
L2
active standby active active active standby active active
 vPC – Virtual Port Channel
vPC Configuration
dc11-5020-2#

feature vpc
feature lacp

vpc domain 10
peer-keepalive destination 1.1.1.2 source 1.1.1.1
system-priority 3000
role-priority 90
peer-gateway
dc11-5020-1# sh run int po 1

interface port-channel 1
switchport mode trunk
vpc peer-link
spanning-tree port type network

dc11-5020-1# sh run int mgmt0

interface mgmt0
ip address 1.1.1.1
vPC – Virtual Port Channel
vPC configuration (continued)

dc11-5020-1# sh run int po 201

interface port-channel201
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-105
vpc 201

dc11-5020-2# sh run int po 201

interface port-channel201
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-105
vpc 201
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 Double Sided VPC
Up to 32-Way Port-Channel – Double-sided VPC
• Generally known as a ‘bowtie’ or Double-sided vPC
multi-layer VPC architecture
• Multilayer vPC can join eight active Nexus
member ports of the port-channels in 7000
a unique 16-way port-channel* 32-way port
channel
• vPC peer load-balancing is LOCAL to Nexus
the peer device 5000

* Possible with Any Device Supporting vPC/MCEC and Eight-Way Active Port-Channels
 Redundancy with Enhanced vPC
Data, Control and Management Plane Redundancy
• Port-channel connectivity to dual-homed FEXs
–From the server perspective a single access switch with port-channel support – each line card
supported by redundant supervisors
–Full redundancy for supervisor, linecard, fabric via vPC and cable or NIC failure via Port-
channeling
–Logically a similar HA model to that currently provided by dual
Fabric Extender dualsupervisor
homed to basedDual supervisor
modular
modular chassis clustered
switch. Suited for all types of servers. redundant Nexus 5000
 Enhanced vPC ( aka Dual Tier vPC)
Supported on Nexus 5500

Any Flavor of Nexus 5500

5548P/5548UP/5596UP

Any Flavor of Nexus 2000 Dual-homed

2148T/2248TP/2224TP Fabric Extenders
2232PP/2232TM

Supported on N5500 Only

N5K – 5.1 (3) Release

Mix of Single NIC, Active/Standby

and Etherchanneled servers can
connect to same FEX
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 Layer 3 and vPC Interactions
Router Interconnection: different angles
vPC view Layer 2 topology Layer 3 topology

7k vPC
7k1 7k2 7k1 7k2

R
R
R
R could be any router, Port-channel looks like Layer 3 will use ECMP
L3 switch or VSS a single L2 pipe. for northbound traffic
building a port-channel Hashing will decide
which link to choose
 Layer 3 and vPC Interactions
Router Interconnection: Forwarding sequence Gotcha
Switch 1
1) Packet arrives at Router 1 with a destination
address of Switch 1
2) Router 1 does lookup in routing table and sees 2
Po2
equal paths going north (to 7k1 & 7k2)
3) Assume it chooses 7k1 (ECMP decision)
4) Router 1 now has rewrite information to which
router it needs to go (router MAC 7k1 or 7k2)
5) L2 lookup happens and outgoing
interface is port-channel 1 7k1 7k2
6) Hashing determines which port-channel member is
Po1
chosen (say to 7k2)
7) Packet is sent to 7k2
8) 7k2 sees that it needs to send it over the peer-link
to 7k1 based on MAC address
Router 1
 Layer 3 and vPC Interactions
Router Interconnection: Forwarding sequence (continued)
Switch 1

9) 7k1 performs lookup and sees that it

needs to send to Switch 1
Po2
10) 7k1 performs check if the frame
came over peer link & is going out on
a vPC.
11) Frame will ONLY be forwarded if:
• Outgoing interface is NOT a vPC or 7k1 7k2
Note: • Outgoing vPC doesn’t have active Po1
interface on other vPC peer (in our
• Use of Peer-Gateway allows data-path forwarding,
example 7k2)
routing/forwarding traffic for the peer-router MAC locally,
but does NOT Enable Dynamic Routing on vPC VLANs Router 1

• Even with Peer-Gateway Routing protocols (e.g. OSPF) are

still broken due to TTL expiry when traversing in transit the
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 FCoE: Asymmetry consideration
Retaining FC best practices with Enhanced vPC
Enhanced vPC
FCoE + Ethernet traffic
FCoE + Ethernet traffic
Ethernet only traffic

Recommendation:
• Evaluate suitability of Enhanced vPC for
FCoE deployments with traffic/flow analysis
• Leverage Straight-thru vPC, if required

• Ethernet traffic gets equally distributed on FEX uplinks to both switches

• FCoE traffic is pinned only to uplink to one switch (for fabric isolation)
• Uplink carrying FCoE end up carrying more traffic (50% Eth + FCoE) than
other uplink (50% Eth)
 vPC Auto-Recovery NX-OS
N7K - 5.2
Reload Restore Superseded by Auto-recovery N5K - 5.0(2)N1
Three cases of single switch behavior addressed
by vPC auto-recovery Peer Keep-alive “Link”

 On Failure of Peer
– Allows State changes on vPC resources
 Recovery of secondary after dual failure vPC
Primary
1. vPC peer-link goes down : vPC secondary shuts
all its vPC member ports Switch “Missing” vPC Peer
2. vPC primary goes down. vPC secondary receive 1
no more keep-alives
3. After 3 consecutive keep-alive timeouts, vPC
secondary changes role and brings up its vPC.
 Restart of a single vPC peer
1. When a vPC peer is missing, by default vPC doesn’t
allow any vPC member port to either flap or for a Switch4
Switch3
new one to be brought online or for existing vPC
member to go up after a reload dc11-5020-3(config)# vpc domain 10
2. Auto-recovery monitors the peer device and if the dc11-5020-3(config-vpc-domain)# auto-recovery
vPC peer is not available it allows new ports to be
 NX-OS

Virtual Port Channel N7K - 5.2

N5K - 5.0(3) N2
Orphan-ports suspend
 A vPC orphan port is an non-vPC
interface on a switch where other ports vPC
in the same VLAN are configured as vPC
interfaces
 vPC orphan ports have historically been
problematic for mixed server topologies
 Prior to release 5.0(3)N2 on Nexus
5000/5500 and 5.2 on Nexus 7000 an
orphan port was ‘not’ shut down on eth 100/1/1
Active/Standby
loss of vPC peer-links Server does not fail
vPC Supported over correctly
 With the latest NX-OS release the
Server fails over
orphan ports on the vPC secondary peer correctly
can (configurable) also be shut down
triggering NIC teaming recovery for all N5K-2(config)# int eth 100/1/1
teaming configurations (identical to VSS N5K-2(config-if)# vpc orphan-ports suspend
behavior)
 vPC Peer-Gateway
• Allows a vPC switch to act as the active
gateway for packets addressed to the
peer router MAC RMAC A RMAC B
L3
• Keeps forwarding of traffic local to the vPC PKL
L2
vPC node and avoids use of the peer-
link. vPC PL

• No impact on traffic and existing

functionality vPC1 vPC2
• Allows Interoperability with features of
some NAS or load-balancer devices.
Best Practice to Enable this Feature

N7k(config-vpc-domain)# peer-gateway
 vPC ARP Synchronization
 Needs to be enabled on both vPC devices
 After the peer-link comes up perform an ARP bulk sync over CFSoE to
the peer switch device
 Improve Convergence for Layer 3 flows
ARP TABLE ARP TABLE

IP1 MAC1 VLAN 100 IP1 MAC1 VLAN 100

IP2 MAC2 VLAN 200
IP2 MAC2 VLAN 200

SVIs
P S

P Primary vPC
S Secondary vPC

IP1 MAC1 IP2 MAC2

ARP Synchronization Process

 vPC Delay Restore
Problem/Impact:
• After a vPC device reloads and comes back up
routing protocol needs time to reconverge. vPCs may
blackhole routed traffic from access to core until
layer 3 connectivity is reestablished
OSPF
vPC Delay restore solution:
• Delays vPCs bringup after a vPC device vPC PL
reload (SVI bring-up timing is unchanged) L3
• Allows for Layer 3 routing protocols to converge forL2a vPC PKL
more graceful restoration. vPC vPC
• Enabled by default with a vPC restoration default Primary Secondary
timer of 30 seconds. Timer can be tuned according
to a specific layer 3 convergence baseline.
 vPC peer-switch
STP Root
STP Root VLAN 1 STP Root
VLAN 1 VLAN 2 VLAN 2
Bridge Priority Bridge Priority
VLAN 1  4K vPC Secondary VLAN 1  8K
vPC Primary
VLAN 2  8K VLAN 2  4K
vPC Peer-link
S1 S2

vPC1 vPC2
No STP Topology Changes
S3 S4
Nexus 7000(config-vpc-domain)# peer-switch

• vPC peer-switch feature allows a pair of vPC peer devices to appear as a single STP Root in
the L2 topology (same bridge-id)
• Simplifies STP configuration by configuring both vPC with the same STP priority
• Eliminates recommendation to pin STP Root to the vPC primary switch.
• Improves convergence during vPC primary switch failure/recovery avoiding Rapid-STP Sync
• Supports a hybrid topology of vPC and non-vPC connections by using the spanning-tree
 STP view of vPC Without vPC peer-switch
vPC Primary vPC Primary
vPC Secondary vPC Secondary
STP root STP root
vPC Peer-link vPC Peer-link
S1 S2 S1 S2
B
P
B
D
P
U
D
vPC1 vPC2 U

S5 S3 S4 S6 S5 S3 S4 S6

With vPC peer-switch

vPC Primary vPC Secondary vPC Primary vPC Secondary
vPC Peer-link
S1 S2 S1 S2
Peer-switch Peer-switch
B B
P P
vPC1 vPC2 D D
U U

S5 S3 S4 S6
 Agenda
• Feature Overview and Terminology
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
–vPC Hardware Support
–Building a vPC Domain
–Double Sided VPC
–Layer 3 and vPC
–vPC Enhancements
–vPC / FEX Supported Topologies
• Scalability
• Reference Material
vPC Supported Topologies
For Your
Nexus 7000 and 5000 Reference

1 2 3 4

active standby active standby

active active

server: server:
active/standby active/standby server:
NIC teaming NIC teaming active/active
no NIC teaming
5 6 78
Port-Channel on HIF
Local (Host Interfaces)
FEX active active supported
active standby
port- -vPC to Host supported
Channel server: server: server:
port-channel active/standby port-channel
NIC teaming port-channel NIC teaming
(active-active) NIC teaming (active-active)
 vPC Supported Topologies For Your
Nexus 5000 Only Reference

New

vPC vPC vPC

vPC
Domain Domain Domain
8 9 10
vPC vPC
standby
active
active active vPC

Dual-homed FEX Enhanced vPC Dual-homed FEX

w/ A-S Server N5500 only w/ Single NIC
Server
 For Your
vPC / FEX Unsupported Topologies Reference

vPC
VDC1 VDC2 vPC vPC
7
11 12 Domain
8 13
8
Only 1 physical
active active
NEXUS 7000
active active
vPC chassis active active
vPC
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Scalability
• Reference Material
 vPC Scalability
For Latest Scalability numbers please refer to the scalability limits pages for the
platform

• Nexus 7000:
For Latest Information on Scalability Limits refer to N7K Verified Scalability Guide :
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/sw/verified_scalabili
ty/b_Cisco_Nexus_7000_Series_NX-OS_Verified_Scalability_Guide.html

• Nexus 5000 /5500

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/confi
guration_limits/limits_513/nexus_5000_config_limits_513.html
 Agenda

• Feature Overview
• vPC Design Guidance and Best Practices
• Convergence and Scalability
• Reference Material
 Reference Material For Your
Reference

• vPC white Paper:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9402/white_paper_c11-
516396.html
• vPC Best Practices:
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/sw/design/vpc_design/vpc_best_p
ractices_design_guide.pdf
• vPC design guides:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps9670/products_implementation_design_guides_list
.html
• vPC and VSS Interoperability white Paper:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/white_paper_c11_589890.html
• Data Center Design—IP Network Infrastructure:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/DC_3_0/DC-3_0_IPInfra.html
• Layer 2 Extension Between Data Centers:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/white_paper_c11_493718.html
• Implementing Nexus 7000 in the Data Center Aggregation Layer with Services:
https://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/nx_7000_dc.html
Recommended Reading
BRKDCT- 2048
Thank you.