Planes (Datacenter)

Planes are groups of superspines in 5-stage blueprints. Every 5-stage topology has at least one plane.

As a Day 2 operation, you can add superspines to planes in 5-stage Clos networks. The maximum number of superspines is limited by the number of available spine ports of type superspine. When you add superspines, additional superspine nodes are created with the same logical devices that are used in the existing blueprint template. You must manually assign the interface maps for the device profiles of each new node. When the devices are physically ready, you can assign each node with their corresponding system IDs (serial numbers). When you commit pending changes, the superspines are configured and they become part of the control and data plane, taking part of forward traffic between pods.

You can also change the superspine logical device on planes to add or update superspine port capacity on 5-stage blueprints. This change is for all planes (not per plane) which, based on the change, could be disruptive. Changing the logical device requires that you specify a different interface map, and possibly a new device profile.

From the blueprint, navigate to Staged > Physical > Planes to go to the Planes view.