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Packet Forwarding Engine Power Management

You can power on or power off the Packet Forwarding Engines (PFEs) in a running system, or keep a Packet Forwarding Engine powered off when the FPC comes online. The following are a couple of scenarios in which this feature is used.

  • When the Packet Forwarding Engine ASIC is malfunctioning.
  • To conserve power in case the deployment does not require the full capacity of the system.

To power off a Packet Forwarding Engine, use the following steps:

user@host# set chassis fpc slot-number pfe pfe-id power off

user@host# commit

You need to apply this configuration to both the Packet Forwarding Engines in an ASIC to be able to commit the configuration.

You can use the show chassis fpc fpc-slot detail command to view the Packet Forwarding Engine power on/off configuration status. See an example below:

Platform-Specific PFE Power Management Behavior

Use Feature Explorer to confirm platform, and release support for specific features.

Use the following table to review platform-specific behaviors for your platform:

Platform

Difference

MX Series

  • On MX series routers with MPC10E-15C-MRATE, you can power off or power on only the Packet Forwarding Engine 2. The Packet Forwarding Engines 0 and 1 do not support this command. On the MPC10E-15C-MRATE, operating the Packet Forwarding Engine 2 requires the Packet Forwarding Engines 0 and 1 to be functional. You can use the command show chassis fpc fpc-lot detail to view the Packet Forwarding Engine power status and bandwidth for the individual Packet Forwarding Engines in the MPC10E-15C-MRATE.