Cisco-HP LACP & STP configuration help

[mon_samonte]

Hi to all,

I would like to seek your help regarding my problem. I have a client that have a combination of cisco & hp switches. They want to implement redundancy & aggregation. I suggest using LACP for aggregation (cause it is used by HP) & STP for redundancy/loop preventation. But my problem is, cisco uses pvst and hp uses industry standard STP. PVST is enable by default on cisco but on HP, stp is not enabled. So my problem is how to configure STP between Cisco (Core) & HP Procurve. I also search for some interoperability between two switches but the result is not that convincing. And there are no documents that proves it will work and I'm not that familiar in configuring HP switches. I have attached the diagram so that you could visualize the design. Hope that you could help me on this. Thanks.

Best Regards,

Raymond

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Raymond,

you should enable STP IEEE 802.1D on the HP procurve in your topology we see two HP Procurve connecting to two other HP procurve and this has to be handled even if the Cisco switches would not be present.

Ensure that the cisco switches will be the primary and secondary root bridge for all vlans including vlan 1.

Cisco switches and HP switches running STP IEEE 802.1D will interact in vlan 1 only, so be sure that vlan 1 is used on all trunk ports and that the two sides agree on native vlan id.

Given the small size of the network going to standard MST 802.1s looks like too much.

cisco PVST+ is compatible with STP 802.1D on a per port basis.

PVST+ BPDUs in vlan 1 are sent using IEEE standard, in vlan different from one using a proprietary format that is seen as multiicast user traffic by STP switches.

see

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps700/products_white_paper09186a00801b49a4.shtml

>>  I'm not that familiar in configuring HP switches

you need to find documentation on the HP web site.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

[mon_samonte]

Hi Giuseppe Larosa,

Thanks for your reply and sorry for my late reply. I was not able to do what you have suggested for I'm not that familiar too on HP switch commands. I have attached the updated diagram if that is what you are suggesting. I have not yet done the procedure coz the switches are in production. Hope you could provide more detail on interoperability. By the way, i have already read the Cisco-HP STP interoperability documentation but it suggest using MSTP. I only have 1 vlan so MSTP is not an option. Thanks again.

Best regards,

raymond