Fex Conversion And Support; Leaf To Fex Conversion - Cisco Nexus 93108TC-FX3P Hardware Installation Manual

FEX Conversion and Support

Step 1
For the transceivers with removable cables, make sure that the transceivers are separated from their interface cables.
Step 2 Insert the appropriate transceiver into an active uplink port on the leaf switch.
Step 3
Insert the same type of transceiver in the spine switch port on the line card.
Step 4 For transceivers with removable cables, insert the interface cable into the open end of each of those transceivers.
Step 5
Repeat Steps 1 through 4 for each spine switch in the ACI fabric.
The leaf switch is connected to each spine switch in the ACI fabric.
Step 6 Repeat Steps 1 through 5 for each leaf switch in the ACI fabric.
Each leaf switch in the ACI fabric is connected to each spine switch in the network,
The fabric automatically implements Equal Cost Multi-Pathing (ECMP) and enables all links. You do not
need to configure the links.

FEX Conversion and Support

By default, Cisco Nexus switches operate in the switch mode. However, Cisco Nexus FX3 platform switches
also support the Fabric Extender (FEX) mode.
This FEX mode allows a switch to operate like a Cisco Nexus 2000 series Fabric Extender. As a result, the
switch will not require any:
• Independent software upgrades
• Configuration backups
• Other maintenance tasks
In addition to existing advantages of FEX topologies on ACI, FX3 switches in FEX mode support speeds up
to 25G per Host Interface (HIF) connectivity to host.
The Nexus FX3 Switches supports FEX mode from ACI release, 6.0(2).

Leaf to FEX Conversion

In Leaf to FEX conversion, FEX5 binary present in the leaf image will be used, so device will come up in
FEX mode with the same version as before the conversion.
• To convert a leaf switch to a FEX mode switch:
Step 1 Login to the leaf, to be converted
Step 2
Run command on the ibash shell. In the backend FEX image will be verified and set as boot variable.
boot-fex
Step 3 Run command. Then the leaf will be converted to FEX.
reload
Cisco Nexus 93108TC-FX3P ACI-Mode Switch Hardware Installation Guide
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Connecting the Switch to the ACI Fabric