Pluribus Fabric

Pluribus switches require the configuration of a fabric to support most network operations. It's recommended even for single switches.

Therefore, after completing the initial setup of a switch, you can create a new fabric instance to add the switch to. Or you can add the switch to an existing fabric.

Note: In case of Virtual Wire configuration it's only possible to set up the fabric over the management interface(s). See the following sections for more details.

What is a Fabric Used for?

When multiple switches join a fabric, the switches act as 'virtual modules' of a 'virtually distributed switch' with a single logical management plane. In this mode of operation, switches share status information and exchange commands based on the configured scope. 

For example, any command with the scope, fabric, executes on each switch belonging to a shared fabric instance. This virtualized management paradigm significantly simplifies the network configuration and speeds up the deployment of complex networks.

A fabric instance can consist of just one individual switch, even though it is more common to have more than one switch, to ensure redundancy. 

Netvisor ONE continues to maintain the sharing of state and scope of a switch as long as the switch belongs to the fabric instance. When a switch leaves one fabric instance to join another one, the switch loses the synchronized fabric state and configuration of the first instance and learns the state and configuration of the second one.

In order to create a new fabric instance, you should use the following command:

CLI (network-admin@switch) > fabric-create name name-string

where name-string designates the name of the fabric.

Use the password option if you want to assign a password to the fabric instance creation process so that other switches are required to securely join the fabric only if the administrator knows the password.

CLI (network-admin@switch) > fabric-create name name-string password<return>

fabric password: hidden-password-string <return>

confirm fabric password: hidden-password-string <return>