Management Ports !

[rush2amol]

Hi,

We are in process of deploying 3850, 4500X and 5525X in our environment and i wanted to know what benefit is received when the dedicated management port on these devices is used instead of the regular data ports.

I specific would like to know -

1. Does the mgt port has a different backplane so in case the switch hangs we would still have its inband access vis the mgt ports ?

2. What feature difference is present between the regular data ports and management ports ?

Appreciate your response and time.

Many Thx in Advance.

Regards,

Amol.

[Richard Burts · Accepted solution]

Amol

While some specifics vary between the various device models it is possible to give you an answer that in general applies to each of the devices that you mention. Using the management port gives you the ability to do management out of band. This means that your management traffic is using an interface that does not mix data traffic with management traffic. This may become significant in cases where there is some problem that is impacting data traffic (broadcast storm is one example that comes to mind). If you are accessing the device via an interface that handles data traffic then your ability to access the device for management purposes could be impacted. But if you are accessing the device on a port that is dedicated to management traffic only then the problem on the data interface will not impact your management access.

As far as I know there is no difference in terms of backplane access for the management port. On some devices the management port may have different bandwidth capacity than the data ports. On some of the devices you can not configure features on the management port such as trunking that you could configure on a data port.

HTH

Rick