Please see below.
1. It says that it has to go through a switch. Could you explain briefly why?
MB: Without a switch, if one CUBE goes down, the interface on the other CUBE will go down as well (not connected). This will confuse the working CUBE and makes it think that its local link is having problem (like cable disconnected) and needs to failover.
With a switch, if one CUBE goes down, the interface on the other CUBE will remain up (connected) while only heartbeats will be lost. Therefore, the CUBE will realize that the peer is dead.
2. If it goes through a switch, and when the switch goes down, what will happen to the role of the active/standby and voice traffic?
MB: I haven't tested this but since its based on HSRP, in theory, both boxes will become active because HA is lost and therefore, you will have an outage because the virtual MAC and VIP will be fluctuating between both boxes
3. We have all switches in a pair. In that case, should we connect one ASR with sw1 and another with sw2? Sw1 and Sw2 are separate switch, not in stack or VSS setup.
MB: That is the ideal scenario. Avoid connecting both ASRs to same switch. Even if the switches aren't stacked or VSS pairs, I am assuming that they are trunked directly or through another L2 network. The idea is that both ASRs should be in the same broadcast domain.
