- Install the individual switches in a rack or cabinet following
the guidelines in Plan a Virtual Chassis
Fabric Deployment.
Best Practice: Install spine devices at the top of the rack
or cabinet in order of primary routing engine (RE), backup RE, and
then other leaf devices.
- Make a list of all of the serial numbers of the devices.
- Log into each device and configure into fabric mode and
mixed mode, if needed. Mixed mode is only necessary for QFX5100 VCF
when QFX5100-96S, QFX5100-48T, QFX3500, QFX3600, or EX4300 devices
are present as leaf devices in the configuration. If a spine device
is not properly configured in fabric and mixed mode for QFX5100 mixed
VCF, the VCF devices reboot to commit the mixed mode or fabric settings.
When fabric and mixed mode are not set, you might need to manually
correct any issues that are related to the VCF not forming correctly
because the device did not immediately join the VCF.
Warning: Only configure operational-level commands. If you commit
any configuration-level commands (including assigning IP address),
the Virtual Chassis Fabric cannot form and the switch must be zeroed.
- Configure the VCF into mixed mode if it is a QFX5100 VCF
and the switch models span different lines of switches.
- Configure each device for one of the provisioning modes:
autoprovision, preprovision, or nonprovision. See:
- Connect and configure one of the management ports (C0)
or (C1) to a management switch as the Virtual Management Ethernet
interface. Using this interface, you can configure and manage the
devices in the VCF. See Connect
a Device to a Network for Out-of-Band Management.
- Commit your changes.
- Cable the ports that you will use as VCPs. For cabling
examples, see Connecting QFX5110 in a QFX5110 Virtual Chassis
Fabric, Connecting a QFX5100 Device in a Virtual Chassis
Fabric, Connecting a QFX3500
or QFX3600 Switch in a QFX5100 Virtual Chassis Fabric,
and Connecting EX Series Switches in a
QFX5100 Virtual Chassis Fabric.
If you configured your devices as either autoprovisioned or
preprovisioned, the Virtual Chassis ports (VCP) are automatically
configured. If you configure the devices as nonprovisioned, you must
manually configure the VCPs.