IP phone - redundancy at switch

[kiyo]

Hello,

We just purchased a second Cisco 300 series switch to be used a backup switch to the primary one. The primary switch has all our IP phones connected to it.

I was wondering is there a way/setup/design that will allow us to have it so that if the primary switch goes down we do not have to manually move the Ethernet connections from the primary switch to the backup switch?

The IP phones are critical, so any downtime will be costly.

Thanks,

KNM

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Your IP phones have only one Ethernet port that can be connected to the network. So, there is no way to be able to connect one port to 2 different switches.  Since these switches are not stack-able, to reduce the possibility of loosing all your phones in case one switch fails, you can try connecting half of the phones to one switch and the other half to the other switch.  This way, if you lose one switch you only lose half of your phones and not all.

HTH

[kiyo]

Hi Reza,

Yes that makes sense. I didn't think of that - thanks!

Question, if the switches were stacking switches, I would still have to connect half of the phones to the second switch in the stack, wouldn't I (to ensure that all the phones do down if the first switch goes down)?

KNM

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

That is correct.  Even if the switches were stacked when one switch fails you would lose all the phones connecting to that switch. The nice thing about stacked switches is that you only configure one switch (the master) and the master pushes the config to all members.

HTH

[Peter Koltl]

The real redundancy is to place two IP phones on each desk. (-: