Connecting Ex Series Switches In A Virtual Chassis Fabric - Juniper EX4300 Hardware Manual

EX4300 Switch Hardware Guide

Connecting EX Series Switches in a Virtual Chassis Fabric

198
Installing a Transceiver on page 247
Maintaining Fiber-Optic Cables on page 255
A Juniper Networks Virtual Chassis Fabric (VCF) is constructed using a spine-and-leaf
architecture and topology. In the spine-and-leaf architecture, each spine device is
interconnected to each leaf device. Supported devices in a VCF are:
QFX5100-24Q (spine or leaf)
QFX5100-48S (spine or leaf)
QFX5100-48T (leaf)
QFX5100-96S ( leaf)
QFX3600 (leaf)
QFX3500 (leaf)
EX4300 (leaf)
Although best practice is to use QFX5100 switches in the VCF, you can use EX4300
switches as leaf devices.
Installations with combinations of QFX5100-48T, QFX3600, QFX3500, and EX4300 as
leaf devices in the VCF are called mixed mode. All VCF installations can support 20 total
devices, of which 4 QFX5100 devices can be configured into spine devices.
You can install a VCF in a single rack, multiple racks, or in wire closets. You construct a
VCF by configuring and then cabling QSFP+ interfaces into Virtual Chassis ports (VCPs).
On EX4300 switches, QSFP+ ports 0 and 1 are configured as VCP by default.
Non-channelized QSFP+ interfaces on EX4300 switches can be configured into VCPs.
The SFP+ network ports may not be configured into VCPs.
BEST PRACTICE:
Figure 58 on page 199 shows two QFX5100-24Q spine devices connected to a
QFX5100-48S, QFX3600, QFX3500, EX4300, and QFX5100-96S leaf devices using all
QSFP+ ports as VCPs.
Use 40-Gigabit QSFP+ ports as VCPs when available.
Copyright © 2017, Juniper Networks, Inc.