CCNP Data Center Question of the Week: Cisco FabricPath

Answer: D.

FabricPath leverages many of the best characteristics of traditional Layer 2 and Layer 3 technologies, combining them into a new control-plane and data-plane implementation that combines the plug-and-play deployment model of a bridged Spanning Tree environment with the stability, reconvergence characteristics and ability to leverage multiple parallel paths typical of a Layer 3 routed environment. The result is a scalable, flexible and highly-available Ethernet fabric suitable for the most demanding Data Center environments. Spanning tree protocol does not run within the FabricPath domain, instead a layer 2 version of ISIS is running to build and distribute a layer 2 routing table. At the edge of the FabricPath domain, for backwards compatibility, it will interoperate with the Spanning Tree domain, appearing as if it is a single bridge, with a shared bridge ID. Typically, you would configure the virtual bridge as root for the STP domain as all forwarding paths would be in the direction of the FabricPath.