Nexus F2e Series Modules

[robert.horrigan]

Can someone tell me what's the difference between F2 and new F2e?  All I can find is MACsec support. Is that it? 

[Leo Laohoo]

in the first place i was going 6500/4500 but the concern was the EOL which might be expected within 10 years for the
 
6500/4500, so the N7K won that game but getting N7K EOL that much soon is a surprisingly thing, will make me to hold a bit.

You are looking at this in the wrong direction.  Products can be EoL any time, it doesn't matter how new it is.  Factors affecting the decsion to EoL a product are:

1.  Lack of interest;

2.  Spare parts;

3.  Technical

The EoL for the 7710 & 7718 could be 2, 3 and probably more.  As recently, Cisco's announced new performance for the 6500 in form of the 6800ia switch.  So EoL of the 6500 chassis is still far off.  The only thing that will be EoL are the line cards.  Cisco has openly told people that 6500 will be seeing a new Supervisor card, Sup10T in the next three years.

4500R+E has a new lease in life in form of a new Supervisor card, Sup8. 

[samer.hasan]

the EOL is for the fabric not the chassis

[Leo Laohoo]

the EOL is for the fabric not the chassis

EoL applies to both the FAB-1 cards for the 7010 & 7018 chassis.  SUP-1 is also EoL.

[glen.grant]

  The new release 6.2.2 does fix the F2E conundrum.  Put it on a couple of 7009's today and allocated ports from a F2E card into the same VDC as a M1 card.  Not sure about an older F2 card did not get a chance to try that out.

[Leo Laohoo]

Glen,

As far as I'm aware, with the new 6.2(2) you still WON'T be able to co-exist an F2 card other than itself.  I was made aware that this was due to a hardware "feature" in the F2 that was later corrected with the release with the F2e.

[zahir_ahmed]

They can reside in the same VDC but you still cannot configure the F2e module as a layer 3...

Just tried with F2e modules, F1 and M1 modules running 6.2.2 but you cannot configure layer 3. There is mention of proxy the traffic from the F2e module to the M1 series module, but no mention on how to configure it..

Let us know if can shed any light on this; we have logged a call with the Cisco PDI helpdesk on this issue.

Weird thing is that Cisco do not clarify this in detail and is only mentioned in some small print in ine of the PDF's!!!

[cweinhold]

F2e and M1 interop has two serious issues:

1. OSPF adjacencies don't work on F2e (release notes)
2. The COS value of L3 control plane traffic is not preserved, which will affect all EIGRP, OSPF, BFD, FabricPath, BGP, HSRP, etc traffic on F2e ports. See slide below

                                  

So if you do M1 and F2e interop, the F2e ports really need to be layer-2 only -- access/trunk/vpc ports that terminate at SVI's. All northbound routing should remain on the M1 ports. You could get away with static routes to next-hops on F2e, but any IGP's would be unreliable.