WLC 3504 Red. port

[ayakoleb]

Hello ,

I have 2 WLC 3504 and need to connect the Redundancy ports -> I checked the deployment guide and found that they should connect back to back or via L2 switch , the question can I use L3 switch instead of L2 switch ?

thanks

[aogston]

Hi. As far as I am aware, they must be on the same L2 domain.  Best to connect back-to-back with a cable if possible.  Sounds like you may struggle here though...

Regards,

Andy.

[ayakoleb]

I cant connect them back to back .. and what do you mean same L2 domain .. do you mean that both of them connected to same L2 switch ?

[aogston]

Hi.

I have never had to do this, but yes, connect both WLC's to a L2 switch, and put them on a dedicated vlan.

Regards,

Andy. 

[omz]

Hi

Cisco suggests connecting back-to-back. They have to be in the same L2 domain as mentioned. 

There are deployments where customers have WLCs in different DCs connected via dark fiber in the same L2 domain and it works fine as long as you have no packet loss. If there is packet loss the HA keepalives will go missing and the WLCs reboot to take over as active. 

Hope this helps. 

[Haydn Andrews · Accepted solution]

The Redundancy port needs to be connected directly or via a L2 non-routed VLAN:

A Redundancy VLAN should be a Layer 2 VLAN dedicated for the HA Pairing process. It should not be spanned across networks and should not have any Layer 3 SVI interface. No data VLAN should be used as a Redundancy VLAN.

The switches can be layer 3 switches but the connection needs to be L2.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/7-5/High_Availability_DG.html