Which port to use for the peer-keep alive

[Peter Coggle]

Hi All,

We have 2 Nexus 6001s in our data center.

The management port of each 6001 is connected to the other and this link is used as the peer keep alive link.

My colleague is suggesting that we use one of the inline data ports as the keep alive link.

Can you please advise on the pros and cons of using management/inline port as keep live link and the best practise to follow in this case?

Thanks,

Pete

[Jay Ocampo · Accepted solution]

Hi Pete,

Here are the best recommendation in order of preference.

1. Use mgmt0 (along with management traffic)

     * Pros: whats good on this option is you are totally separating the VPC Peer keepalive link on another VRF (management) and does not mingle with the data or global vrf..

     * Cons: VPC PKL is dependent on the OOB management switch.

2. Use dedicated 1G/10GE front panel ports. 

    * Pros - can just be a direct link between the N6K pair and not dependent on other boxes. 

    * Cons - you need extra SFPs for VPC PKL while the VPC PKL traffic join the global VRF.

HTH

Jay Ocampo

[Peter Coggle]

Thanks again for the helpful reply, Jay.

[William Zielinski]

I know for the 5K's it's recommended to connect the management ports back to back, but that won't work for the 7K's as it'll cause the keepalive link to fail on a supervisor switchover.

For the 7K it's recommended to use an OOB management network for keepalive and not connect switches directly to each other.  

Sorry I don't have info specifically to the 6K but I'm assuming one or the other applies.