HSRP VS SSO HSRP

[avilt]

In the past I have used HSRP on routers. Now SSO HSRP is introduced on 3850 switches as well. Can this be used on pure L2 environment or it is it for L3 environment?

[Jon Marshall]

HSRP at L2 makes no sense as HSRP provides L3 gateway redundancy. 

SSO HSRP is used when the device has multiple Route Processors (RPs) and one RP is active and the other standby and the HSRP information is synced between them so if the standby RP has to take over the HSRP virtual IP can still be used. 

Jon

[avilt]

So to conclude SSO HSRP cannot be used for L2 flat network.
Please provide me some link on some of the deployment examples.

[Jon Marshall]

Not sure I understand what you mean by flat L2 network. 

SSO HSRP is just HSRP, the only difference being if the device you are running HSRP on has multiple RPs. 

That is the only difference, so you can run HSRP on L3 switches and you can run SSO HSRP on L3 switches, from an HSRP perspective they are the same thing. 

Jon

[avilt]

Let me explain the current scenario.

Currently I am using 3750 Stack switches (2) as active and member switch (default), I have several lower level switches in a ring (non Cisco) which are terminated on these 3750 switches as uplinks. From each ring, 1 LAN cable goes to Active switch and another cable to Member switch of the stack.

From each ring, to avoid loop formation, I used flexstack feature (backup interface ) which is no longer available on the latest firmware. All the systems are in a flat single vlan. In this case I believe I have to rely on spanning tree protocol to avoid loop formation. Can SSO be used to overcome flexstack feature which is no longer available?

[Jon Marshall]

I don't think I am explaining this very well. 

SSO is about redundancy between RPs or chassis and nothing to do with STP, HSRP etc. 

SSO is not a replacement for any of the L2 or L3 protocols so if STP is the only available protocol for L2 loop prevention that is what you will have to use. 

Jon