How to connect two VSS systems

[ap_cisco0]

Hello,

We would like to deploy two VSS clusters, one at our main office and the other at a co-location site. We are currently running two HP switches that handle all of the switching between these sites. We have two connections between the two sites: a 100 meg fiber connection and a internet connection that is layer two VPN'd with two linux openvpn servers. The later connection is obviously much slower so we just set the stp path-cost to be much higher on that connection for fail-over if the fiber goes down. These two sites need to be in the same broadcast domain because certain apps require it (VMware)...that's why we don't stick a router between the two sites. My question is can we still run STP between the two Cisco VSS clusters? Or is there a better/different way to do it?

Thanks!

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Stephen,

>> My question is can we still run STP between the two Cisco VSS clusters?

yes each VSS behaves a single device from the point of view of STP

Hope to help

Giuseppe

[ap_cisco0]

Thanks! One more question:

We need at least a VS-S720-10G-3C supervisor engine right? This engine has 2 10 gig uplink ports and 2 sfp's. So we would connect the two CAT6500's with the 10 gig ports...can we use the other 1 gig ports to connect a CAT2960? Or can we use one 1 gig uplink on each of the VS-S720-10G-3C's to create a redundant etherchannel uplink?

Thanks,

[Rahul Kachalia]

Hello,

You should following various Data Center Interconnect solution as describe in following url:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/white_paper_c11_493718_ps8768_Products_White_Paper.html

If possible please describe/provide network topology diagram that you are planning to deploy to assure that network can take an full advantage of VSS technology benefits...

thanks,

rahul.

[ap_cisco0]

Thank you.

I reviewed the document and I guess my question is if you can use the uplink ports on the VS-S720-10G-3C supervisor for VLC to the other CAT6500 and as a MEC to another switch (provided the switch supports MEC)? I'll get a diagram drawn up.

Thanks.

[ap_cisco0]

This document helps:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9336/products_tech_note09186a0080a7c74c.shtml

It looks like the ports on the supervisor just show up as normal ports...so we could in fact use it to create a MEC to another switch. The only reason we want to do that is to avoid buying a SFP module and only use one port on it because we only have one switch that will be connected via fiber all the rest will connect into copper gig ports on a seperate module.

Thanks.

[Rahul Kachalia · Accepted solution]

By default all the ports in VSS can be used to connect to the network. There are 2 types of interfaces that you need to interconnect back2back between virtual-switch nodes - VSL and dual-ACTIVE Fast Hello.

Not sure if I understood your response correctly but prevent deploying single-home devices to the VSS. It is not an recommended network design and may not be able to take complete VSS advantage...

thanks,

rahul.

[ap_cisco0]

Understood. Thanks for all of your help!