6500 VSS Problem With Mac Learning

[kh.farhad]

Hello everyone,

We have 2 cat 6500 in vss mode with 4 VS-S720-10G MSFC3C as sup engine, these are the access switches to our storages. Here there are 2 models of storage attached to the switches in redundant scheme: emc vnx 5500 and emc vnx 5700. Each storage has two controllers one attached to VSS-A and the other to VSS-B. The problem is that only 5500 storage systems are pingable when both controllers are attached to the switches and 5700 controllers are not pingable or sometime one is pingable and quickly time out happen again.

To figure out the problem I connected all of controllers and my laptop to a 2960 switch and every thing is fine but as soon as I connect the switch to one of the 6500 switches, the same problem happens again.

The other test: I connected all controllers to the line card installed in VSS-A chassis, then the problem soved. Same test for VSS-B chassis.

I checked the mac address table on 6500 switches and mac addresses were there for all controller but the arp for 5700 controllers were suddenly cleared out.

The IOS for both chassis is: s72033-adventerprisek9-mz.151-1.SY5.bin

It's really confusing, I don't know what to check any more, any suggestions?

[Mark Malone]

Hmm sounds like there's a conflict with these devices working with Cisco VSS , as standalone as you said no issues , im not familiar with theses specific emc devices but your saying the arp clears out have you tried to statically assign these by mac and arp on the VSS in cli to see if it that works so they cant be removed ?

Did you check with EMC were these units supported on VSS systems in case there's a known design conflict

[kh.farhad]

Hi mark,

No I didn't statically set arp entries I should try that.

And I'm try to check with EMC too but I don't think the issue is with storage systems, because they don't understand VSS, they just see a single chassis switch in front of them.

I'll try static arp entry and share the result. Thank you for suggesting that.