Deploying Dell Networking MX9116n Fabric Switching Engines (FSEs) and Networking MX7116n Fabric Expansion Modules (FEMs) is a different process. The FSEs are installed into the A1 fabric of the first chassis and the A2 fabric of the second chassis. The FEMs are distributed across both PowerEdge MX7000 chassis in the remaining A fabric slots. The FEMs connect back to the FSEs using a double data rate, 200 Gbps cable. The connection between the compute sleds and the MX modular switches do not use any kind of link aggregation protocol. Additional PowerEdge MX7000 chassis (up to 8 more) can be added and require only the MX7116n FEMs in the A1 and A2 fabric slots. The additional ports available for uplink make the MX9116n an excellent choice for the deployment of VMware NSX-T edge nodes. Since NSX-T is now a part of Cloud Foundation 4.0, we place the emphasis of this document on the MX9116n Scalable Fabric Architecture.
The connections from the modular switches to the external network are implemented using Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) link aggregation. VLT allows you to create a single LACP-managed link aggregation from the two modular switches to an LACP-managed aggregation in the external network. Use the link aggregation only on the link between the modular switches and the customer network.