144 non-blocking ports in IS5200

Infrastructure & Networking Switches and Gateways InfiniBand/VPI Switch Systems
1

I have to configure 144 QDR ports in IS5200. So I start from QDR Chassis and then add 8 QDR Leaf Boards.

My question is, if all the ports have to be non-blocking, how many Spine Boards should I add? Is really 6

necessary? I know that 216 non-blocking ports (12 Leaf Boards) require exactly 6 Spine Boards, but this

maximal configuration always could be reached as a future expansion. Thank you in advance for your advice!

2

The IS5200 has 216 ports: 12 leafs and 6 spines.

Each of the 12 leafs is ‘meshed’ with the 6 spines in the midplane with 18 internal ports per leaf, and 18 external ports you connect your cables and HCAs towards.

Each of the 18 ‘internal’ ports per leaf is split to each spine with 3 uplinks.

So, for full non blocking, you will need all spines.

If, for example, you only had 1/2 of the spines, only 9 uplinks from the leafs would be uplinked to the midplane/spines.