Friday, March 8, 2019

FEX vs Dedicated Switches

We currently operate a multi-tenant datacenter network and are looking at options to expand our 1G TOR switching. Currently, we are using Nexus 93180YC-FX's as 10G aggregation and have a few 2248TP-E FEXes for current 1G needs. Most devices will be CPEs (firewalls, SD-WAN devices, etc) and most of their traffic will be to/from devices hanging off the host 9ks. The FEXes we have now are single homed as the downstream devices are generally HA and have cluster members split between the FEXes.

We're at a point where we can easily change paths, so we've looked at other options and came up with the Nexus 9348GC-FXP as a possibility. It gives us some additional design options (ie. VXLAN) that we don't currently have and is potentially more flexible. A downside is that we lose our current "single pane of glass" for management from the host switch.

So... I come to the hive mind for an opinion. If you had a choice, would you prefer the simplicity and single management plane of the FEX, or implement independent switches in this situation?



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