[c-nsp] Nexus 5xxx VPC peer keepalives

[Church, Charles]

Anyone,

	Coming up on a design issue with our upcoming first deployment of Nexus 5010s and 5020s in a new datacenter.   It's recommended in the following doc to use the mgmt0 interface for peer keepalive messages:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/layer2/Cisco_Nexus_5000_Series_NX-OS__chapter8.html#concept_47F7274E5FDA489884D0488BC491B066

We're doing a true out of band management approach on this new network, so the mgmt0 interfaces all home back to an OOB switch/router (4507)  which houses the NMS gear, etc.  My concern is that a reload (or failure of some type) on this OOB switch could cause a 'dual active' situation on all the Nexus pairs of devices .  (6 pairs of 5010s, and the pair of 5020s that aggregate the 5010 pairs).  I don't think I want that to happen.  So the alternative seems to be a back to back non-VPC-peer link between the two devices using a VLAN interface, but I hate the idea of using a 10 gig port just for keepalives.  There are what appears to be additional copper mgmt ports on the boxes, but they're covered up, and not in the CLI.  Any way to utilize those?  Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?  Or am I stuck getting 1 gig copper SFPs and crossover cables for keepalives?

Thanks,

Chuck