Redundant Controlling Bridges

For added resiliency and redundancy, the VPEX architecture allows you to form an extended bridge using multiple controlling bridges (CBs).

You can use MLAGs to form an extended bridge with two CBs, also serving as MLAG peers, connected to dual-homed BPE devices using MLAG cascaded ports (see Redundant Controlling Bridge Architecture with MLAG over Cascaded Ports).

Note

When using MLAG, you must run LACP on the CB MLAG cascade ports.

Note

With an MLAG/Extended Edge Switching topology, enabling policy and using policy features does not work with the ONEPolicy default resource profile. Use the profile-modifier feature to free up ACL resources from any specific policy profile (see Platform Rule Allocation).

Redundant Controlling Bridge Architecture with MLAG over Cascaded Ports

With redundant CBs attached to each BPE, the associated extended port configuration must be identical on each controlling bridge. To reduce the configuration complexity and to minimize the risk of inconsistency, you can use orchestration mode so that any configuration commands are now checkpointed to the MLAG peer switch. Before entering orchestration mode, ensure that any configuration parameters (connecting ports for the BPEs, VLAN names, numbers etc.) are the same for both CBs.

After entering this orchestration mode, like the existing virtual-router mode, the configuration prompt changes indicating that commands issued are within this context:

(orchestration bottom) X670G2-48x-4q.4 #

When using automation (see Configuring Extended Edge Switching Topology with Partial Automation (Auto-configuration) and Configuring Extended Edge Switching Topology with Full Automation) to set up redundant CB MLAGs, the following occurs:

The same slot number is assigned to the same BPE on both CBs.
MLAG port is configured for first tier BPEs. The MLAG port identifier is set to 5,000 plus the BPE's slot number.

To enter orchestration mode, use the following command:

start orchestration mlag peer_name

To exit orchestration mode, use the following command:

stop {orchestration}

Published March 2020prev | next

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