Selecting an FHRP Protocol

[davsnet2000]

Hello Cisco Community,

  What would be the best FHRP protocol to use with the following LAN network and why?  I'm old school Cisco who has been stuck using HSRP and old LAN designs and want to break out with newer best practices.  Sorry I don't have access to provide a topology, but I will try to describe the simple network design.

Network is a Collapse Core two L3 IR/DR design with six L2 Access Switches.  Static routes are used between both L3 devices and VLAN interfaces with defautl routes to the firewalls.  Firewalls are used for our WAN connection.

  HSRP has been in place for about 10 years and the L3 devices are at EOL.  I’m thinking of going with GLBP with the new equipment.

  What would be the better protocol to use for this size network and what would be the migration path?

  When I was working in a server farm I had a chance to use and installed Nexus switches.  I liked the redundant path capability of Nexus over single path spanning tree.

[pman]

Please see the difference between the following FHRP protocols:

 

[davsnet2000]

PMAN,

I've seen the chart, but in a small network like ours how does GLBP make a difference over HSRP?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

An "in depends" answer.

If you're overloading the gateway device and the gateway interface to that device, then being able to "easily" offload traffic to other gateways, then something like GLBP can be "better" than HSRP.

I also recall (?) GLBP has additional load balancing options not available with HSRP.

In a small LAN like yours another option you might consider is to use stackable L3 switches which don't need a FHRP for gateway redundancy (nor STP).  As a "collapsed core" such a stack can have dual uplinks, from each access device, which go to different stack members, generally configured as Etherchannel links.

You might consider stackable switches a miniature (and earlier) version of VSS (although not limited to two physical devices).  Possibly just me, but I like both stackable devices and/or VSS approaches over the Nexus approach.