[c-nsp] PAgP or LACP timers

[Pickett, McLean (OCTO)]

Dell has a pass through card that allows you to connect the server NIC's
directly to your 3750, which is perfect and solves all of these problems. A
quick check to the IBM site did not a comparable Ethernet card.

The Cisco switch modules are inadequate because you cannot channel server
NIC's inside the chassis. If you need more that 1 VLAN on the chassis then
you'll need a trunk and now every time the server guys power cycle the
chassis your whole datacenter takes a spanning tree recalc...

Cisco needs to work out a way to "stack" the switch modules over the
management network or some other out of band network.

McLean  

-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Ran Liebermann
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 6:14 PM
To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: [c-nsp] PAgP or LACP timers

Hi all,

I have a scenario in which there are two 3750 switches for the IBM blade
center.
I'd like to implement etherchannel between the switches so that 8 GE ports
will pass through 8 of the blade servers, while each blade is acting as a
bridge. So far so good.
Each of the blades is running an application, that when fails it also
disrupts the bridging capabilities of the server, therefore not allowing
frames from one side to the other.

Now, the thing is that whenever a blade server is inserted in the chassis
the ports on the switches become up, so in order to control whether a port
is a member of a channel-group I must deploy PAgP or LACP.
However, the inherent timers of the protocols are somewhat slow, 30 seconds
between keepalives, which is too long in order to detect a failure.

My question is divided to two:
1. Is it possible to somehow change the timers of PAgP or LACP? (we found an
"lacp rate fast" command only on 6500).
2. Do you have a different suggestion for the above requirements?

Many thanks,
--
Ran.
_______________________________________________
cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/