Catalyst 6509 Core Switch.

[earevalo]

Other than having a 6509 spare in a disaster recovery plan, what other measures can be implemented in disaster recovery for the catalyst 6509.

[DALE FRANCIS]

In terms of DR you mean off site device, if that is the case a Supervisor and a few of the modules, eg if you running DFC modules in production then do not have them for DR to save on cost.

However if you talking about pure redundany, then TWO SUP's and TWO PSU's etc.

[earevalo]

Thanks for your input and yes the DR device is off site.

[DALE FRANCIS]

In that case, a chassis two PSU's and one supervisor and a subset of line cards that you need for connectivity.

Eg: a FlexWAN module with serial interfaces that are used as backup, that way its a matter of routing to flip over to DR.

[earevalo]

What if : The core switch ( production ) is the only unit on site, other than installing a separate SUP card

( which in my view isn't really DR measure, because it will be housed in the same centralized Chassis, thus go down with the unit ) what other measures can be inforced?

[DALE FRANCIS]

Okay, so now we talking about the production chassis failing, if you want that type of scenario, then for a spare chassis, i would still get a spare SUP that is preconfigured, a spare PSU and definately a spare line module or two.

If it is purely off site DR, then you could even use the above parts to build a remote DR site.

[rajesh444]

If you have a spare 6509, it is recommended to have the 2 6509 switches in the backbone trunked with HSRP running for automatic failover with multiple groups defined one for each VLAN.

You can also utilize the load-balancing feature by defining one 6509 switch as the STP root for the even-numbered VLANs and the other 6509 as the root for odd-numbered VLANs.

Use the "set spantree root" macro for this purpose. Please refer to the Cisco website for sample configuration.

Hope this helps,

RAJ