Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Nx-Os Layer 2 Switching Configuration Guide, Release 5.0(3)N1(1 - Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Configuration Manual

vPC Overview
you to create redundancy by enabling multiple parallel paths between nodes and load balancing traffic where
alternative paths exist.
Figure 8: vPC Architecture
You configure the EtherChannels by using one of the following:
• No protocol
• Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)
When you configure the EtherChannels in a vPC—including the vPC peer link channel—each switch can
have up to 16 active links in a single EtherChannel. When you configure a vPC on a Fabric Extender, only
one port is allowed in an EtherChannel.
You must enable the vPC feature before you can configure or run the vPC functionality.
Note
To enable the vPC functionality, you must create a peer-keepalive link and a peer-link under the vPC domain
for the two vPC peer switches to provide the vPC functionality.
To create a vPC peer link you configure an EtherChannel on one Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch by using
two or more Ethernet ports. On the other switch, you configure another EtherChannel again using two or more
Ethernet ports. Connecting these two EtherChannels together creates a vPC peer link.
Note We recommend that you configure the vPC peer-link EtherChannels as trunks.
The vPC domain includes both vPC peer devices, the vPC peer-keepalive link, the vPC peer link, and all of
the EtherChannels in the vPC domain connected to the downstream device. You can have only one vPC
domain ID on each vPC peer device.
Always attach all vPC devices using EtherChannels to both vPC peer devices.
Note

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Configuring Virtual Port Channels