Configuration Guide

Table Of Contents
©2021 Extreme Networks, Inc. All rights reserved
October 2021
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10. VSP 7000 – Fabric Interconnect
The VSP 7000 by default operates in Fabric Interconnect stacking mode. The VSP 7000 can be provisioned
in rear-port mode where the rear Fabric Interconnect ports will be treated as multiple virtual ports over the
4 physical Fabric Interconnect Ports. When in rear-port mode, the VSP 7000 operates in a standalone
mode.
Two modes of operation are available in rear-port mode, standard or Shortest Path Bridging (SPB).
Standard mode allows all the switch standard features minus SPB across the rear ports, i.e. Spanning Tree,
OSPF, RIP, etc. In SPB mode, in the 10.2 release Shortest Path Bridging is supported while in the
10.3 both SPB and SMLT are supported. Hence, when FI Mesh is required, rear-port mode with operational
state of SPB needs to be provisioned. The diagram shows the FI port speeds available depending if
Standard or SPB operational state is enabled.
To provide greater plug n ’play capability over the virtual ports when rear-port mode is enabled, LACP link
aggregation and VLAN tagging are automatically enabled. This ensures that multiple virtual ports which
may run within a single cable or if multiple FI cables are run in parallel that all virtual ports are automatically
treated as one link. This simplifies any protocol adjacency such as IS-IS or OSPF. When you issue rear-
ports mode all virtual ports will have their LACP state set to true, the LACP Admin Key to 4095 and LACP
hashing mode be set to advance.
Color Physical Fabric Interconnect Port Rear Port Mode Throughput Ports
Black FI Up (right) Top Standard 240Gbps (x3 40GbE)
34, 35, 36
SPB 240Gbps (x3 40GbE)
Red FI Down (left) Top Standard 240Gbps (x3 40GbE) 38, 39, 40
SPB 160Gbps (x2 40GbE) 38, 39
Blue FI Up (right) Bottom Standard 80Gbps (x1 40GbE)
33
SPB 80Gbps (x1 40GbE)
Blue FI Down (left) Bottom Standard 80Gbps (x1 40GbE)
37
SPB 80Gbps (x1 40GbE)
Figure 7 – FI Rear Port Details
In FI mesh, it is recommended to connect “like” color fabrics interconnect ports together, i.e. red
port to an adjacent switch red port to get maximum possible throughput. You can connect any
color ports together, i.e. a red port to a blue port, however, the port throughput will drop to the
lower of two ports.
Rear-port interfaces 33-40 are regular Ethernet 40 GbE interfaces. For some of the rear-ports
multiple such 40 GbE interfaces are bundled to
g
ether. As the rear-ports constitute a backplane