SFS has two profile personalities:

• VxRail Layer 2 (L2) Single Rack: The original (legacy) SFS personality automates the configuration of a single pair of top-of-rack (ToR) or leaf switches for VxRail clusters.
• Layer 3 (L3) Fabric: The newer SFS personality automates the configuration of a leaf-spine fabric.

Note: Dell Technologies requires use of the L3 Fabric personality for new SFS deployments. The L2 Fabric is deprecated and not supported on any new deployment.

L3 Fabric personality

The L3 Fabric personality was introduced in OS10.5.0.5. The L3 personality enables users to deploy SFS in a single rack and expand to multirack as business needs evolve.

The L3 personality automatically builds an L3 leaf-spine fabric, facilitating a faster time-to-production for hyperconverged and private cloud environments while being fully interoperable with existing data center infrastructure. For information about building the SFS L3 Fabric and supported switches, see the References.

The following examples use the L3 Fabric personality. Unless otherwise specified, statements about SmartFabric behavior and features apply only to the L3 Fabric personality.

The following figure compares the traditional deployment approach with the new approach:

Figure 15.    Transition from a “network of boxes” to a networked fabric

The preceding figure shows a topology of multiple VxRail racks. The following figure shows an example of an SFS Layer 3 leaf-spine fabric:

Figure 16.    SFS Layer 3 leaf-spine fabric