Dual homing connections to catalyst

[karamak2]

Hi all,

Had a query.  Essentially, we have two catalyst 6506 connected to a number of host machines and they are all critical. Both catalyst switches are running at around 85% utilization.  We are unable to reboot any one of the CAT switches due to criticality that the servers need to stay up.

My question is we are looking into dual homing these servers. We were thinking of connecting these servers to a layer 2 switch then connecting the layer 2 switch to both the catalyst switches. In that case rebooting one of the CAT switches wouldn’t have any affect on the others right? Below is the scenario I was thinking.

Server--à Cisco 3560-----------------------à CAT1

                  Same Cisco 3560 as above  ------àCAT 2

Can anyone provide other ideas how else to dual home these? So that rebooting one of the catalyst switch, I can still have services up?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Julio E. Moisa]

Hi

Yes, you could connect your severs to a robust L2 (Could be a 3850 switch) switch(es) and then connect this switch or stack of switches (for redundancy) with 1 uplink to primary 6500 and a backup link to secondary 6500. Try to use fiber uplinks to connect the L2 switch with the 6500's. You could keep the STP roots for these vlans on the 6506s.