Interoperability between HP procurve and Cisco Switches

[lawwm]

Hi Guys,

I am interconnecting 2 HP procurve switches in a Cisco Switch environment.

The 2 HP switches will be in between 2 Cisco Switches 3550 and 6XXX series.

One of the Cisco switches are in VTP transparent and the other one in VTP server mode.

HP have recommnded that when interconnecting with cisco the cisco switches have to be in transparent mode.

However do you guys know if it will work if the Cisco switches VTP mode is left as server and client, because of the architecture my colleagues have informed me that we cant change the VTP settings.

Thanks. Hope someone can help soon thanks.

Best reagrds,

Law

Please advice

[vijayasankar]

Hi,

As VTP will only be recognised by Cisco switches, the vlans that you create in the VTP server switch will only be propagated to the VTP client switches.

Im not sure about your topology and how the switches are connected..

The new vlan details, which are created in the VTP server switch will not be available to the HP Switch. In this case, you have to create the vlan once again in the HP switch as per your need and assign ports to it.

Ensure that the inconnecting links from the HP switch to Cisco switches are properly configured. IF the interconnecting links are trunk links, then you can only use 802.1q trunks, as isl tagging is proprietary to Cisco switches.

Also ensure that the spanning tree protocol that you select in your topology is compatible with that of the one supported by the HP switches.

Apart from this there shouldn't be any issues.

HTH

-VJ