Nexus 5K design

[sridhar ch]

Hi,

Need help with Nexus 5K design. Currently N5K is being used as SAN switch in our environment. EMC storage is connected to Nexus which in turn connected to Core switches on 1G trunk. We are planning to introduce one more N5K as a redundancy for storage connectivity as it holds the critical data. Please advise if the proposed design holds good, else let me know what modifications are required. 

Attached current and proposed topology.

Thanks,

Sridhar

[Walter Dey]

Hi Sridhar

I assume you mean IP storage, not Fibrechannel ?

Looks ok to me; I just assume, that from each EMC controller you can do one or (two) LACP port-channels ?

Walter.

[sridhar ch]

No idea if we can configure port channels in EMC controller.

Just want to check if we have L2 trunk port channel between the core switches (6509), will that create any loop with VPC in place?

[sridhar ch]

yes, we can configure port channels on EMC.

just want to check, can we have VPC with L2 trunk port channel between 6509's?

[Walter Dey]

Hi

I assume your Catalyst 6509 have a VSS configuration connected to a Nexus 5k VPC. Look at the following documents, which explain how to design this:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Campus/VSS30dg/campusVSS_DG/VSS-dg_appa-configs.pdf

VSS-Enabled Campus Best Practice
Configuration Example

http://keepingitclassless.net/2011/10/virtual-switching-system-on-cisco-catalyst-6500/

Virtual Switching System (VSS) on Cisco Catalyst 6500

http://dustydev.blogspot.ch/2012/10/configuring-vss-cisco-6500-and-vpc.html

Configuring VSS (Cisco 6500) and vPC (Cisco NX5K)

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/white_paper_c11_589890.html

Cisco Catalyst 6500 VSS and Cisco Nexus 7000 vPC Interoperability and Best Practices White Paper

Walter.

[sridhar ch]

My Cisco 6509 is not running on VSS, its L2 trunk port channel.

Just want to check if we have L2 trunk port channel between the core switches (6509), is VPC still recommended?

[Walter Dey]

Do you have devices multihomed to the 6509's ? or why is the trunk between the 2 6509 necessary ? STP Loops ????

[sridhar ch]

My 6509's are acting as core's and HSRP is running between them. Also once core is STP root and the other is secondary. I dont want to disturb the existing setup just to introduce Nexus for 10G connectivity. All my acces layer swicthes have trunk to both cores for redundancy. Also we have 61XX line cards which are not compatible for VSS configuration.

My question is, is VPC recommended in my case?

[sbhadrav@cisco.com]

This collection  provides guidelines for designing and deploying the access and
aggregation layers in the data center using Cisco Nexus.
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-7000-series-switches/C07-572831-00_Dsgn_Nexus_vPC_DG.pdf.