Virtual Clustering / Split multilink trunking on Cisco 4503

[AustinMas]

Dear All,

Do the cisco 4503 switches support virtual clustering feature ? I have a requirement where switch ports on two different 4503 switches need to combined in the same Link aggregation group . This is needed because the firewall notes say that the aggregated interfaces need to be conected to a single switch and combined in the same LAG .  So according to the diagram below , the interfaces marked RED need to be in the same LAG in the switches , same for the interfaces marked BLUE . I have done the same setup using Juniper switches where it uses VIRTUAL CLUSTERING to group the different switch ports in the same LAG.

Can anyone tell me if this is possible using Cisco 4503 switches.

[sean_evershed · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It is not possible to split an etherchannel across two different 4503 switches.

You would need to move up to the 6500 range and run VSS in order to achieve this.

Alternatively you could use a pair of stacked 3750 switches acting as a single switch.

Edit: if you had layer 3 uplinks between the switches and firewalls then the routing protocol will load balance traffic between these devices.

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[AustinMas]

Thanks for the reply .

So you mean to say tha the above setup can be done on a 3750 but not on a 4503 .

But if I remove the etherchannels crossing over to two  different switches and terminate them on a single switch , then the resulting setup would not be  a Full Mesh setup  . I guess I will have to go ahead with redundant interfaces instead of aggregated interfaces to achieve the full mesh setup . Can you tell me if redundant interfaces terminating on separate 4503 switches  are supported or not ?