Physical Etherchannel Ports as a SPAN Source on a VSS

[daniel.mace]

We have two 6500's in a VSS configuration in which corresponding ports are in a port channel for closet uplinks. We were planning on setting up 10Gb ports on each box to send SPAN info for each box to. So, each box will have its own monitor destination and none of this traffic will traverse the VSL ports.

My trouble came when I tried to set the source ports:

VSS(config)#monitor session 1 source int te1/5/1 both

When I tried this, I received the following error:

% Etherchannel member(s) Te1/5/1 cannot be monitor source

I can't seem to find any documentation or any forum posts to help me with this. Does anybody have a workaround or a better way to SPAN data off a VSS setup?

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Have a look at this document:

A port-channel interface (an EtherChannel) can be a SPAN source, but you cannot configure active member ports of an EtherChannel as SPAN source ports. Inactive member ports of an EtherChannel can be configured as SPAN sources but they are put into the suspended state and carry no traffic.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6500/ios/15-0SY/configuration/guide/15_0_sy_swcg/span_rspan_erspan.html

HTH

[daniel.mace]

Thank you for your help!

As far as best practices, how should I set up as my sources and destinations on the VSS? It sounds like I'm down to doing it by VLAN or by port channel, since everything connected to this VSS is in a port channel.