Cisco Nexus vPC (Virtual Port Channel) Training

Explore the Nexus operating system for data center switches, featuring modularity, resiliency, and serviceability, continuous availability, built on the Linux kernel with Python support.

Access downloadable resources (workbook, labs txt files, PNG images) to set up Eve-NG and VPC topologies and deploy lab images (Linux, Windows Server, Nexus switches) via QEMU and WinSCP.

Explore Cisco StackWise, Virtual Switching System (VSS), and Virtual Port Channel (vPC), comparing port-channel basics with multi-etherchannel, stackable, and Nexus-based approaches for high-availability and scalable network designs.

Explore virtual port channel (VPC) as a virtualization technology that links two Nexus switches into a single logical port channel for a third device, enabling multi-chassis etherchannel across Nexus platforms.

Master virtual port channel concepts to build high availability port channels across Cisco Nexus switches, using etherchannel, vpc, and virtual switching system.

Illustrate how two Nexus switches form a VPC, creating a logical device and summarizing VPC components: domain, peer, member, member port, keepalive, peer link, VLAN, and CFS.

Upload Cisco Nexus 5k and 7k images to eve-ng with WinSCP, set folder and file names, apply fix permissions, and boot the devices for vpc lab access.

Upload the Nexus 9K image to eve-ng using winscp ftp, naming the folder nxosv9k in lowercase and the file as sata, then apply the fix permission command.

Learn to recover a Nexus 9K from the boot loader by using dir to locate the image, boot the iOS image, and save running to startup-config for reliable boots.

Explore Cisco Nexus vPC deployment types: single sided vPC and double sided vPC, linking access and aggregation layers with etherchannel to enable active-active connectivity in data centers.

Configure single-sided vPC by linking two Nexus switches with dual peer links and a keepalive connection, then define the vPC domain, set member links, and test failover.

Configure a single-sided vpc on two Nexus switches with a third switch, including keepalive and domain setup, peer link port channel 1, and member link port channel 10.

Configure a single-sided vPC with Windows Server NIC teaming across two Nexus switches, using a peer link and keepalive, a defined vPC domain and port channel to form an EtherChannel.

Configure back-to-back vpc to extend traditional vpc into double-sided topology with separate domains. Establish connectivity, peer and keepalive links, enable vpc and lcp, then synchronize configurations and test failover.

Configure a double-sided back-to-back vpc across four Nexus 9000 switches, including management IPs, keepalive, VPC domain, peer link, and member port channels with primary and secondary roles.

Explore vpc primary and secondary roles, the non-preemptive election, and how two switches coordinate in a vpc domain using priority, sticky bit, and mac address tie-breakers.

Understand how VPC on Nexus uses a shared system Mac address for peer links and a local system Mac address for single-attached devices, and how domain ID affects Mac generation.

Explore two VPC consistency checks: type one suspends the secondary device on global or interface mismatches, while type two issues warnings without suspension, using Cisco Fabric Services to compare configurations.

Demonstrates practical VPC consistency checks in a two-switch lab. It compares global and interface status for type one and type two mismatches, with suspension actions and verification using show commands.

Learn how Cisco fabric services (CFS) distributes and synchronizes configuration, MAC and ARP entries across Nexus VPC peers via the peer link, with IPv4/IPv6 multicast and consistency checks.