Juniper QFX3000-G QFabric, Deployment Manual, Page: 51 / 652

and out of the QFabric system. Because all Node devices in the QFabric system connect
through a backplane of Interconnect devices, in essence all Node devices are connected
to one another. This directly connected design model eliminates multiple tiers of
aggregation and core devices and provides minimum latency, maximum scalability, and
rapid transport of server-to-server traffic and QFabric system-to-external network traffic.
Sets of Node devices can be bundled together into Node groups , in which each group
operates as a single virtual entity. Node groups that connect to servers and storage
devices are known as
server Node groups , and Node groups that connect to external
networks are known as network Node groups .
QFX3500 Node Devices
The QFX3500 Node device works as part of a QFabric system. A QFX3500 chassis
provides up to 48 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to connect to endpoints or external
networks. You can configure 12 of these 48 interfaces to support 2-Gbps, 4-Gbps, or
8-Gbps Fibre Channel. You can also configure the remaining 36 interfaces with Gigabit
Ethernet.
NOTE: You can configure interface ports
0
through
47
as 10-Gigabit Ethernet
ports,
0
through
5
and
42
through
47
as Fibre Channel over Ethernet ports,
and
6
through
41
as Gigabit Ethernet ports. However, you cannot configure
any Fibre Channel over Ethernet ports as Gigabit Ethernet ports or vice versa.
In addition to these server and network interfaces, there are four uplink interfaces to
connect the QFX3500 Node device to Interconnect devices in a QFabric system. These
uplinks use 40-Gbps quad small form-factor pluggable plus (QSFP+) interfaces.
The control plane requires two management ports on the QFX3500 chassis to connect
the Node device to the control plane network.
Figure 8 on page 26 shows an example of
the data plane and control plane connections for a QFX3500 Node device.
25 Copyright © 2015, Juniper Networks, Inc.
Chapter 2: Hardware Architecture Overview