Home > Integrated Products > VxRail > Guides > Planning Guide—VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 on VxRail > Switch port capacity
Cloud Foundation on VxRail leverages adjacent Ethernet switches in the data center racks to support cluster operations and to enable connectivity for end users and IT management. The Ethernet ports on the individual VxRail nodes plug into the switch ports to enable connectivity for both the underlying VxRail cluster and for the Cloud Foundation workload layered on top of the clusters.
A cluster can be deployed using two, four, six, or eight Ethernet ports per node to support VxRail networking. To support Cloud Foundation networking requirements, it is a best practice to reserve two Ethernet ports per VxRail node for this purpose. VxRail nodes support Ethernet connectivity speeds of 10 Gb, 25 Gb, and 100 Gb. If physical network separation is not a requirement, or dedicating the entire bandwidth of a pair of Ethernet connections to a single network is not a requirement, you can consolidate the Cloud Foundation on VxRail networks onto a smaller set of Ethernet ports.