Juniper/Apstra Product SE Team :doctype: book :appversion: 0.2 = Apstra Test Drive Guide :language: asciidoc

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)

Lets Create A Dual-Homed Rack

Let’s create a rack with redundant switches for high availability using EVPN ESI:

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

    Rack Design

  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 a rack type that can be used as a building block for your data centre fabric design. In the next section, we’ll use this rack type 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.