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).

Note

Extended Edge Switching Auto-configuration (see Configuring Extended Edge Switching Topology with Partial Automation (Auto-configuration)) uses values within the range of 5100 to 5164 to configure an MLAG port ID. It is recommended that you do not use values within this range when configuring MLAG port IDs manually, since the MLAG port might be unconfigured by auto-configuration when auto-configuration finds the MLAG port ID has already been used.

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) switch model #

To enter orchestration mode, use the following command:

start orchestration mlag peer_name

To exit orchestration mode, use the following command:

stop {orchestration}