Lab Guide 1 - Juniper

Creating Rack Types

Rack Types are modular definitions that represent the physical structure of your data centre racks, including:

  • Top-of-rack switches

  • Servers and workloads

  • Connections between devices

  • Redundancy settings

Think of Rack Types as the building blocks you’ll use to assemble your complete data centre design. By creating reusable Rack Types, you can quickly scale your network design by adding new instances of the same rack configuration.

In this exercise, we’ll create two common rack configurations:

  1. A single-switch rack (single leaf)

  2. A dual-switch rack with redundant connectivity (dual leaf)

Exercise 1: Create Single Leaf Rack Type

Let’s create a simple rack with a single top-of-rack switch and one connected server:

  1. Navigate to Design  Rack Types and click Create in Designer

    Rack Design

  2. In the Summary section, configure:

    Summary Value

    Name

    your_name-single

    Fabric connectivity design

    L3 Clos

  3. Add a leaf switch by clicking the leaf icon in the bottom menu. With the node selected, click the wrench icon to configure:

    Leafs Values

    Name

    your_name-single

    Logical Device

    slicer-7x10-1

    Links per spine

    1

    Add single leaf

  4. Add a server by clicking the Add Generic icon in the menu. After it appears, configure it with the wrench icon:

    Server Values

    Name

    single-server

    Logical Device

    AOS-1x10-1

    Add single generic

  5. Connect the devices by:

    1. Click and drag to select both the switch and server

    2. Click the chain icon to create a link between them

    3. Set Count to 1

    4. Click Create

      Single server link

  6. In the next view, you can optionally modify the link label, then click Create

    Single server link 2

  7. Your completed rack should look like this:

    Single rack complete

Exercise 2: Create Dual-Homed Rack Type

Now let’s create a more complex rack with redundant switches for high availability:

  1. From Design  Rack Types, click Create in Designer

  2. Configure the rack summary:

    Summary Value

    Name

    your_name-esi

    Fabric connectivity design

    L3 Clos

  3. Add a leaf node and configure it:

    Leafs Value

    Label

    your_name-esi

    Logical Device

    slicer-7x10-1

    Links per spine

    1

    Redundancy Protocol

    esi

    ESI dual leafs

    Notice how selecting "esi" automatically adds a second leaf switch to your design!

  4. Add a dual-connected server:

    Parameter Values

    Label

    dual-server

    Logical Device

    AOS-2x10-1

    Dual server links

  5. Create connections by selecting both leaf switches and the server, then:

    1. Ensure both "First" and "Second" peer switches are checked

    2. Click Create

      Dual server links 1

  6. In the next screen, set LAG Mode to "LACP Active" and click Create

    Dual server links 2

  7. Your completed dual-switch rack should look like this:

    Dual server

Congratulations! You’ve created two rack types that can be used as building blocks for your data centre fabric design. In the next section, we’ll use these rack types to create a complete network template.

Pro Tip: Rack Types are extremely flexible - you can design them to match exactly how your physical racks are configured, with different server types, connection patterns, and redundancy options. For large data centres, well-designed Rack Types dramatically simplify the network design process.