4500: Force port to stay up

[martintonner]

Hello all,

Just looking for (hopefully) a quick answer on this. Got a weird situation with a mgt server looking for link status on a 4500 switch and some Disaster Recovery servers which are down except during DR invocation. Our mgt server always shows these ports as 'down' so when it comes time to patch a new server in, these ports get used causing problems during DR.

Does anyone know how to force a port to stay up on the 4500? I've tried the 'no keepalive' trick, but it doesn't have any effect.

Thanks,

Martin.

[rajatsetia]

Hi Martin,

I understand what you have asked but let me take a different approach to this problem.

The simplest possible way to avoid using Desiganted "DR PORTS" is to add the description on the ports.

Donnt really know if your network admin will read the description before allocating port to plug in some other server.

If not than lets wait if anybody else come up with some innovative approach to this problem.

rgds

[martintonner]

Good suggestion and a distinct possibility. My concern with just labelling the ports is that there a few of us on the network support team and even though people may get the message initially about not touching designated 'DR_PORTS', it's the kind of thing that gets forgotten over time. So if there is a way to force a port to stay up, I'd still love to hear it.

[rajatsetia]

Hi

I was just hoping if someone else could give you solution as per your requirement to make that the switch port UP always for your mgmt server still this thread is not moving forward....

Ok, I have one more input and that is to use port security feature and allow only DR Server MAC Address and if any other server is plugged in , port will either go in err-disable state. this will again not make the port UP for you but does solve your DR related issue.

search for keywords "switchport port security" on cisco and you will easily find the doc for complete implementation.

rgds

[martintonner]

Thanks for the suggestion. That could help and I'll probably use it unless someone comes up with a way to force the link status to UP.