Features comparison : Cisco vPC and Cisco VSS
Today i will talk about two technologies and these are vPC : Virtual Port Channel and VSS : Virtual Switching system. Both of these technology works differently in their domains. There are some queries generated from you guys to understand the difference between them or to understand how actually they differ from each other.
Before we are going to start with the common and the different points let's talk about the technology one by one and the queries raised by some of the users of this blog. I am very thankful to all of you who really spent such a good time to ask queries and clear the concepts.
Below are some of the questions which i capture from you guys, There are lot of other questions as well but guys let me clear 1 thing here, vPC works on Nexus devices and VSS on Cisco high end catalyst switches. Both are different and works in different Scenarios.
Cisco VSS :Virtual Switching system
Cisco VSS combines a pair of Catalyst 4500/6500/6800 series switches into a single network element. The VSS manages the redundant links, which externally act as a single port channel. The VSS simplifies network configuration and operation by reducing the number of Layer 3 routing neighbours and by providing a loop-free Layer 2 topology.
So here it is clear that VSS technology can't be use on the Access switches until and unless you are using Cisco 6500,Cisco 6800 and Cisco 4500 Switches in your network.All these 3 switches generally used in the distribution or Core layer and the concept of VSS is generally used at the distribution layer of enterprise network.
Below is how VSS looks like in the enterprise network architecture and make sure about it that these are Cisco catalyst switches, It can be Cisco 4500/6500 and 6800 Switches.
I will not recommend to use such high-end devices in the distribution where the demand of the network is very much low. Always use collapsed core network architecture to
The full explanation about the VSS or the VSL or how this infrastructure works, i will explain the same in the different article. It is just to showcase a view about the VSS used in the network.
Cisco vPC: Virtual Port Channel
Thanks for raising your queries and as i earlier said, I will come up these technologies in details to understand in depth.
Before we are going to start with the common and the different points let's talk about the technology one by one and the queries raised by some of the users of this blog. I am very thankful to all of you who really spent such a good time to ask queries and clear the concepts.
Below are some of the questions which i capture from you guys, There are lot of other questions as well but guys let me clear 1 thing here, vPC works on Nexus devices and VSS on Cisco high end catalyst switches. Both are different and works in different Scenarios.
- What is VSS and how it works ?
- What is the difference between the VSS and port channel ?
- Is vPC is the advance version of the port channel technology ?
- How we can differentiate between the vPC and VSS ?
- Where to use vPC and where to use VSS ?
- Do we have any command to enable vPC on Cisco 6500 Chassis ?
- Can we use vPC and VSS on the same switch ?
- Do we have option to use VSS on Cisco 3850 or Cisco 2960-X switches ?
Cisco VSS :Virtual Switching system
Cisco VSS combines a pair of Catalyst 4500/6500/6800 series switches into a single network element. The VSS manages the redundant links, which externally act as a single port channel. The VSS simplifies network configuration and operation by reducing the number of Layer 3 routing neighbours and by providing a loop-free Layer 2 topology.
So here it is clear that VSS technology can't be use on the Access switches until and unless you are using Cisco 6500,Cisco 6800 and Cisco 4500 Switches in your network.All these 3 switches generally used in the distribution or Core layer and the concept of VSS is generally used at the distribution layer of enterprise network.
Below is how VSS looks like in the enterprise network architecture and make sure about it that these are Cisco catalyst switches, It can be Cisco 4500/6500 and 6800 Switches.
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| Fig 1.1- Cisco VSS Physical and Logical View in the network |
The full explanation about the VSS or the VSL or how this infrastructure works, i will explain the same in the different article. It is just to showcase a view about the VSS used in the network.
Cisco vPC: Virtual Port Channel
A virtual PortChannel (vPC) allows links that are physically connected to two different Cisco Nexus 5000/7000 Series devices to appear as a single PortChannel to a third device and that device can be fiber extender ( FEX ) or named as Nexus 2k Switch.
A vPC can provide Layer 2 multipathing, which allows you to create redundancy by increasing bandwidth, enabling multiple parallel paths between nodes and load-balancing traffic where alternative paths exist.The vPC domain includes both vPC peer devices, the vPC peer keepalive link, the vPC peer link, and all the PortChannels in the vPC domain connected to the downstream device.
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| Fig 1.2- Cisco vPC |
So now it clearly says that vPC technology only uses on Cisco Nexus devices and cant be the part of Cisco catalysts or Cisco Access Layer switches. You can't use these features on your Cisco 3850 Switches. It is mainly built for Cisco Nexus Switches. Hope some of the point clear when i discussed about the vPC above.
Similarly, I will take another article to explain the vPC in detail with the configurational part as well. So below is the feature comparison between both the technology. Please let me know if your queries resolved here and let me know if you have another queries on it i will happy to explain.
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| Fig 1.3 - VSS and vPC Comparison |
