EX2200 Virtual Chassis brings the Virtual Chassis flexible, scaling switch solution to the Juniper Networks EX2200 Ethernet Switch. You can connect up to four EX2200 switches together to form one EX2200 Virtual Chassis and manage the unit as a single chassis. The advantages of connecting multiple switches into a Virtual Chassis include better-managed bandwidth at a network layer, simplified configuration and maintenance because multiple devices can be managed as a single device, increased fault tolerance and high availability(HA) because a Virtual Chassis can remain active and network traffic can be redirected to other member switches when a single member switch fails, and a simplified Layer 2 network topology that minimizes or eliminates the need for loop prevention protocols such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).

You configure an EX2200 Virtual Chassis by configuring interfaces connecting EX2200 switches into Virtual Chassis ports (VCPs). Optical interfaces on EX2200 and EX2200-C switches can be configured into VCPs. All RJ-45 interfaces, including built-in network ports with 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet connectors and 1000BASE-T RJ-45 transceivers, on EX2200 and EX2200-C switches, can also be configured into VCPs. EX2200 and EX2200-C switches can be interconnected into the same EX2200 Virtual Chassis. EX2200 switches cannot be interconnected into a Virtual Chassis with any other Juniper Networks EX Series Ethernet switches.

An EX2200 Virtual Chassis is configured, monitored, and maintained like other EX Series Virtual Chassis. See Understanding EX Series Virtual Chassis Components.

An EX2200 Virtual Chassis has the following limitations that are not applicable to other EX Series Virtual Chassis:

• Support for only four member switches.
• Limited VCP bandwidth to transport network traffic across the Virtual Chassis. EX2200 switches support only 1 Gbps interfaces, and configuring these 1 Gbps interfaces into VCPs is the only way to interconnect EX2200 switches into an EX2200 Virtual Chassis. You can configure up to 8 1 Gpbs interfaces configured as VCPs into a single Link Aggregation Group (LAG) bundle, so a VCP LAG supports a maximum bandwidth of 8 Gbps.

  On other EX Series Virtual Chassis, you can configure optical ports that support 10 Gbps as VCPs. These 10 Gbps ports form VCP LAGs that can have significantly higher overall bandwidths. See Understanding EX Series Virtual Chassis Port Link Aggregation.

  The lowest bandwidth for a dedicated VCP used to interconnect an EX Series Virtual Chassis is 64 Gbps.

• Limited support for high availability features. Most high availability features, including Graceful Routing Engine switchover (GRES), Nonstop bridging (NSB), Nonstop active routing (NSR), and Nonstop software upgrade (NSSU), are not supported on an EX2200 Virtual Chassis.
• No support for fast failover.