Applying BPDU filter on the trunk ports connecting Blade switches

[sachidananda panda]

Hi all,

I have a small doubt in applying bpdu filter on the trunk ports connecting HP blade switches(again cisco switches) in my data center. the above diagram can be seen for reference. I am not able to find out a proper document saying anything negative but I myself not in favour of this. Can anybody give any idea of disadvantages of putting bpdu filter on the trunk ports(which almost disables STP on those ports)

Thanks & Regards

Sachi

[Jon Marshall]

csco11031128 wrote:
Hi all,
I have a small doubt in applying bpdu filter on the trunk ports connecting HP blade switches(again cisco switches) in my data center. the above diagram can be seen for reference. I am not able to find out a proper document saying anything negative but I myself not in favour of this. Can anybody give any idea of disadvantages of putting bpdu filter on the trunk ports(which almost disables STP on those ports)
Thanks & Regards
Sachi

Sachi

Why would you want to disable the sending and receving of BPDUs on switch interconnects. BPDUfilter is designed for ports where you do not expect to receive BPDUs but a port(s) that connects switches to each other should never have BPDUfilter enabled.

Jon

[sachidananda panda]

Jon,

Thanks for your query. the reason behind is  that the blade switches are not under our control. so in case any misconfiguration at the blade switch level it should not reflect to the whole data center consisting of around 20 4948 switches & more than 500 servers. So avoid that we want to sagregate the STP domain by completely blocking the BPDUs on the ports where blade switches are connected.

Thanks

Sachi

[Ganesh Hariharan]

Jon,
Thanks
for your query. the reason behind is  that the blade switches are not
under our control. so in case any misconfiguration at the blade switch
level it should not reflect to the whole data center consisting of
around 20 4948 switches & more than 500 servers. So avoid that we
want to sagregate the STP domain by completely blocking the BPDUs on
the ports where blade switches are connected.
Thanks
Sachi

Hi Sachi,

Bpdufilter effectively turns off spanning tree on a port,With bpdufilter enabled there is nothing to protect you from a loop.

Hope to help !!

Ganesh.H

[Jon Marshall]

csco11031128 wrote:
Jon,
Thanks for your query. the reason behind is  that the blade switches are not under our control. so in case any misconfiguration at the blade switch level it should not reflect to the whole data center consisting of around 20 4948 switches & more than 500 servers. So avoid that we want to sagregate the STP domain by completely blocking the BPDUs on the ports where blade switches are connected.
Thanks
Sachi

Sachi

If the switches are not under your control then even more reason to not to turn STP off on those links.

Jon