Configuring redundancy, high availability and HSRP on dual Cat 6509s

[qmcnetwork]

Our configuration: two 6509s with dual SUP2/MSFC-2 cards. We have multiple VLANs setup on 2950s on the edge connected back to the 6509s via 3550s. We want to use the 6509s in a redundant configuration whereby if any one component on the primary 6509 fails, the secondary 6509 will take over. Basically using the secondary 6509 as a hot-spare. Can SRM be implemented across two 6509s or can it only be implemented within a single chassis? Is there a better redundant design?

Thanks for any assistance.

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

SRM is for MSFCs in the same chassis and cannot be extended across chassis.

SRM for MSFCs in the same chassis and HSRP between the 2 chassis should be a good design. By this, the redundancy is less complex rather than running HSRP on all 4 MSFCs(4 way redundancy). The follwing page should help as well

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/sw_6_3/confg_gd/redund.htm

[qmcnetwork]

Ah...ok I see. So I've configured SRM on each chassis and I see that the redundancy is in effect. Now when configuring HSRP across routers, I create a vlan 10 on both routers and then create an HSRP relationship between the vlan interfaces. If I issue a no shut command on the secondary HSRP interface I have ipx problems. I am unable to see directory services info, spx traffic gets lost, etc. As soon as I shut down the secondary interface ipx seems to be fine. So there is some kind of confusion with ipx when both interfaces are active. So am I missing something that will hold the secondary inactive until the primary fails?

[qmcnetwork]

Ok, we've figured out why we were having the problem with ipx. Apparently it's an issue with using HSRP over 802.1q. We had the two 6509s connected via trunk lines running 802.1q. Once we reconfigured the trunk lines to use ISL, the HSRP configuration worked with interfaces on both routers active. We found the answer in the Ciscopress book "Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks", it's the only reference we went through that explained configuration of HSRP over ISL..