Add a redundant link to the managemt interface on a stack of 3650 switches

[gcarlosmario@comcast.net]

Hi. My question is: can a redundant link be added to the management interface (interface GigabitEthernet0/0) on a stack of 3650 switches?  The stack only shows one out of band interface (GigabitEthernet0/0).  If it can be done, what would be the configuration to connect both management ports to the out of band VLAN?  We are currently using only one management port and an IP address has been assigned to GigabitEthernet0/0 on the management VLAN.  Thank you for your help.

[Mark Malone]

Hi
when in stack form the mgmt port is for the stack , you can have cables in each mgmt port but can only be 1 ip address under the mgmt port and it acts for all the switches in the stack , so if sw1 goes the stack is still reachable over mgmt port in sw2 as that's still, up and cabled

[marcopolo07]

I have the same scenario. We have a stack and want to add redundancy on the Management interface. Seeing that we can only add one IP to the interface, will adding the second MGMT cable on the second switch in the stack cause any issues that it sees the same IP on different uplink switch? We plan on connecting one switch to a 2k and the second switch in the stack to a different 2k.

[Mark Malone]

Hi
No it wont all my stacks are set like that i have them split across multiple out of band management switches , only one of them can be active at a time and its the master mgmt port only , if that fails completely secondary mgmt will take over and become active

its better to use a dedicated mgmt switch for oob though rather than a fex connected to a 5k , that means your mgmt traffic will be pushed up through the cluster and mix with prod traffic which negates the whole out of band port really

[marcopolo07]

The dedicated management switch has been a whole different topic. lol. Since we have never done redundant oob Mgmt before our only concern was whether the 2k would see the same IP. Thank you for your insight. Is there anything special we would need to do on the redundant 2k uplink? Currently we have just have it as an access interface with no ethchannel.

[Mark Malone]

no your good only 1 ip but you need to have both 2k access ports in correct vlan of the mgmt subnet range.

[marcopolo07]

Awesome, thank you again