Problems setting up Nexus 5000(s) for inband management

[MilitaryNerd]

Hello,

I've tried to find another posting anywhere that is having this issue and all I found was a question on another site that whcih is still unanswered.  My situation is this-- we do not have an out-of-band management network and setting one up at this point is not being planned.  We are mainly a swtiched environment and the only devices that are using L3 are the core switch for WAN purposes and the lab because it is mimicking the production environment.  I have two Nexus switches that are sitting on the other side of a 3750 switch which is currently acting as a L3 device because this is a pre-production environment for a new project.  We had an issue with management of the devices before but our workaround was to put them on the management vlan direcltly off of the core, allowing only management traffic to pass by means of mgmt0 on each device.  The problem I'm having now is that I've now setup the mgmt0 interfaces on both for the keepalive link for vpc only (vpc traffic is going accross 2x10gb connections and the link to the 3750 is 1gb each trunked) and have lost my ability to use the mgmt0 connections for management.  If someone could figure out how to connect my management connection through either the 3750 or directly off the core switch (as that's what will happen once it's put into production) I would greatly appreciate any/all help.  Thank you!

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

You don't have any other 1Gig interface to use for VPC keepalive to free up the mgmt0 port for management?

[MilitaryNerd]

I don't see how this would help my situation because ip routes are not working on the default vrf.  I imagine the two would not be able to talk to each.  Whether I use the mgmt0 for management or the keepalive doesn't change the fact that a default no L3 traffic works when originating from the nexus switches.

[Oleksandr Nesterov]

Anthony

Basically you should use mgmt for both purposes - managing and vpc keep-alives.

According to design recommendations - mgmt port should be connected to out-of-band network - your 3750 in this case (ports on 3750 towards n5k should be access ports - not routed and in the same vlan).

N5K1-mgmt0--------vlanX---------3750--------vlanX---------mgmt0-N5k2

                                                      |

                                                      |

                                       Management server

Both n5k will be available to exchange keep-alive messages and you will be able to reach both of them using mgmt0 ip address.

HTH,

Alex