Connectivity Guide

15 Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition Switch Configuration Guide for VxRail featuring S5248F-ON,
S5232F-ON and S5148F-ON
4 VxRail in the data center
4.1 Leaf-spine network
Dell EMC recommends using a leaf-spine network in the data center with leaf switches configured as VLT
peers. The switches and VxRail nodes covered in this guide are shown in Rack 1 in Figure 12 and are
incorporated into a data center’s leaf-spine network.
Rack 1
S5148F-Leaf1A
S5148F-Leaf1B
VLTi
VxRail node n
VxRail node 1
VxRail node 2
Rack n
Leaf-nA Leaf
-nB
Spine2
Spine1
VLTi
L3
L2
L3
L2
Device connections
VLTi connections
Leaf-spine connections
Layer 2/Layer 3 boundary
Rack 2
Leaf-2A Leaf-2B
VLTi
Additional VxRail clusters, servers,
storage, etc.
Additional VxRail clusters, servers,
storage, etc.
Dual switch topology with VLT connected to a leaf-spine network
In Figure 12, the Layer 2/Layer 3 boundary is at the leafs, meaning traffic within each rack is switched (Layer
2) and traffic between racks is routed (Layer 3). The VMware Validated Design 4.3, Architecture and Design
document recommends isolating vSAN traffic to its own Layer 2 network segment. Therefore, for this leaf-
spine topology, each vSAN should be contained within a single rack. Since a VxRail cluster contains a vSAN,
a VxRail cluster is also contained within a single rack.
Note: By default, VxRail does not enable routing of vSAN or vMotion traffic.
The leaf-spine topology in Figure 12 scales to sixteen racks or more, depending on the number of ports
available in each spine. Racks may contain additional VxRail clusters, switches, servers, storage arrays, and
other devices as needed.
To configure the remainder of the leaf-spine network, including spine switches, connections between leafs
and spines, and routing protocols, see the
Dell EMC Networking Layer 3 Leaf-Spine Deployment and Best
Practices with OS10EE document.