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Connect 2 3560Gs to be "one"

edwin.laguni
Level 1
Level 1

Hello to All,

I'm really having difficulty trying to find an solution to what seems to be an easy task - probably that's because I really didn't have any formal networking training, yet I've been assigned to complete such networking task. I hope our good friends here can give us some advice how to:

1. Connect two 3560Gs to be "one"

2. Provide instructions how to go about doing this.

Basically what I'm trying to do is connect 2 ESX hosts, each with 2 ethernet ports available - which are teamed in a standard vSwitch (one IP per team), that will connect to the two 3560G switches. These connections will be the connections to the datastore, and by having 2 switches we try to get switch level redundancy. Hopefully the punny diagram attached would help explain what i'm trying to say.

Please help!

IMG_00000028.jpg

15 Replies 15

Edwin,

Having much less practical experience than Leo, John and Simon, I completely trust their professional opinion that the 3560 is not up to the task of carrying that much traffic. At the other hand, I also understand that you have not chosen this particular switch model, in fact you appear to have only a little impact on the overall design, and right now, you are simply required to provide an apparently working configuration, otherwise bad things will happen. Our reluctance of providing you with sample configs simply stems from the fact that even though you will deploy an apparently working solution, very probably, there will be performance issues associated with it, so in the end, both your customer's experience and your professional reputation will suffer more than if you backed off from this project. If you decide to use the configs I am willing to share, you should explicitly tell your superiors and the customer that under the existing circumstances, it will "just" work and you can not take any responsibility for the deficiences of the platform you were unable to change. Neither can I take any responsibility for their fitness.

As explained earlier, stacking the 3560 to become "one" is technically not possible, this platform simply does not support it. It is therefore simply impossible to group vmnic0 and vmnic1 into a team and yet have the physical links go to different 3560s. There is just no way of doing that. If this design is mandatory, then you can not proceed at all, you'd need at least the 3750 (see Leo's recommendation about the Nexus platform). If the customer can be persuaded to have both links from a single server to be connected to a single switch then I can provide a sample configuration for the EtherChannels and a routed link between the two 3560s.

Let me know.

Best regards,

Peter

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