External Ethernet Connectivity Supported Configurations

  • Updated on Jan 24, 2026
  • 2 minute(s) read
Prev Next

Summary

Please note, this article refers to VAST clusters which are connected using the following topology:

  1. VAST cluster is using Ethernet switches for Internal-VAST communication

  2. Some or all VAST CNodes use the same Ethernet switches for client-facing traffic (NFS, S3, SMB)

This article does not apply to:

  1. VAST Clusters using InfiniBand (IB) for Internal-VAST communication

  2. VAST clusters where all CNodes use a separate NIC for client-facing traffic (NFS, S3, SMB)

Overview

VAST Data supports using Ethernet Switches for internal and external connectivity from/to the VAST cluster.

Internal Connectivity

By internal connectivity, we mean the data traffic between VAST CNodes and DNodes.

VAST Internal Connectivity

External Connectivity

By external connectivity, we mean for the data traffic between the customer network clients and the VAST C-nodes Virtual IPs. More specifically, referring to the connection of the VAST Mellanox Switches to the external world, which is a set of network switches provided by the customer.  Examples of this traffic include NFS, SMB, and S3 protocols.

VAST External Connectivity

In this series of articles, we cover the supported external connectivity from the VAST-provided Ethernet Switches to the customer network switches (a.k.a Uplink Switches).

As a general guideline for this set of articles, each set of 2 VAST provided Ethernet Switches is configured with Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MLAG) connected to one another with two or more IPLs (Inter Peer Links). This enables the switches to act like one fabric for high availability and performance load-balancing . More specifically, this results in the two VAST switches appearing as a single switch, exposing a LAG to upstream switches.

Note: The configuration recommended below is applied only on the VAST network switches connected to the customer network switches. e.g - in VAST Spine-Leaf switches implementation, the configuration should be applied only on the Spine switches.

VAST external connectivity is supported on top of one of the following networking layers:

  • Layer 2 Networking Connectivity -  When referring to Layer 2 connectivity, the idea is no Layer 3 routing is configured on VAST Ethernet provided switches. The network clients and Vast VIPs may reside on the same L2 network (network subnet & VLAN). If not, the customer should have a router (gateway) which routes between the networks.

    In this type of configuration, the VAST Mellanox switches external connectivity is based on one or more MLAG interfaces. 

    On the Uplink Switches, the corresponding ports should be aggregated either as regular LAG interfaces or MLAG interface (in case the Uplink switches act as one fabric with MLAG).

  • Layer 3 Networking Connectivity - When referring to Layer 3 connectivity, the idea is a Layer 3 routing is configured on VAST Ethernet provided switches. The VAST switches will be configured as a router (gateway) to enable access to the VAST Virtual IPs.

    In this type of implementation, VAST uses multiple networking protocols such as Multi-active gateway protocol (MAGP), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), and Equal-cost multi-path routing (ECMP).

Related articles