Design Consideration: Redundancy for cisco C9407R

[prash723]

We have 2 core switches (cisco C9407R with network-essentials License) and 8 access switches. We don't want to use Stackwise Virtual as it requires subscription based Network Advantage License. What will be the best alternative to achieve high availability? 

[Leo Laohoo]

---

@prash723 wrote:

We don't want to use Stackwise Virtual as it requires subscription based Network Advantage License. What will be the best alternative to achieve high availability? 

---

Old school HSRP.

[balaji.bandi]

Agree with @leo HSRP and IGP (OSPF and Eigrp) with limited routing in place.( essential Licence there is limitation of routing table).

[MHM Cisco World]

depend on,
if the GW in Core not in Access SW then HSRP BUT with HSRP group which give you some load balance between two Core SW
if the GW in Access SW then you need to run some L3 protocol like OSPF or EIGRP and here 
1- if the VLAN is not same in access SW then router port between Access and Core is OK
2-if the VLAN is same in access SW then L2 trunk between the access SW and Core, this make client in same VLAN connect to other client in same VLAN but in different access SW.

[lagerplane]

If using HSRP, another consideration is to make sure you are running rapid-pvst on both devices and make sure the STP root matches with the HSRP active Switch for each Vlan. If SW#1 is the HSRP active for vlans 10,20,30 then make SW#1 the STP root for those same Vlans 10, 20, 30. Then if SW#2 is the HSRP active for Vlans 40, 50, 60 then make SW#2 the STP root for those same Vlans 40, 50, 60.

Also, add "no ip redirects" , "no ip unreachable" and "no ip proxy-arp" on all your SVIs (and any other Layer 3 ports, if any) on both devices.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Access switches are only L2?

If so, as noted by @Leo Laohoo , the traditional approach of using a FHRP, such as HSRP (or VRRP or GLBP), would be the way to go.

However, if switches have any L3 capability, which even some "L2 switches" sometimes support, it might also be possible to route between your core and access switches.

[prash723]

Thank you All of you for your suggestion. I will go for HSRP in core switches. I have below doubts.

***connectivity between Core Switches and Access switches.***

I have 6 vlans spread across all access switches. I want to connect two links for each access switch from Core1 & Core2. As we can't configure port-channel how the preferred connectivity should be L2 or L3? Why?

***connectivity between Core Switches and Firewall***

we have single firewall connecting to core switches. How we should connect firewall with redundancy towards core switches.

1. Create virtual SW with two ports from FW and tag same vlan on both core switches.

2. Can we connect via L3 port? If yes how we will achieve the redundancy?

Thanks & Regards,

Prashant 

[Leo Laohoo]

Spanning-tree and cost out one leg.