[nsp] High-availabity GigE connection to two switches

[Arnold Nipper]

Rubens,

first: I neither work for shoremicro nor have experience with these kind
of products. I know there are other products as well but can't remember
the names (iirc this was a thread on NANOG recently).

On 01.06.2004 23:41 Rubens Kuhl Jr. wrote:

>>>Any suggestions on how to provide high-availability to a server that
>>>has two network cards, each one connected to a different switch ?
>>>Etherchannel doesn't seem to apply here, unfortunately. (Switch is
>>>either a Cat4K or a Cat6k)
>>>
>>
>>did you ever try one of these link protectors (e.g.
>>http://www.shoremicro.com/html/sm-2601f.shtml)? If you would also make
>>use of your two network cards, put them back to back.
> 
> 
> And that link protector might become the single point of failure(although it
> defaults to primary on loss of power, if it fails for any reason...)

... unless you start to cascade them. The device also comes with dual power.

> Besides that, dual network card is also a requirement. I didn't get how
> putting two cards back to back with this link protector would work.
> 

Of course you still would have to work out which interface to use on the
OS level. Maybe it could work to have both interfaces configured
identically as only one link is up.

Hence using a sm-2601 inverse connected to the server and have the
"protected" link connected to the "protected" port of the second sm-2601
should do what you want.


Arnold
-- 
Arnold Nipper / nIPper consulting, Sandhausen, Germany
email: arnold at nipper.de
phone/mobile: +49 172 2650958
fax: +49 6224 9259 333