[c-nsp] Nexus 2000 vs Catalyst 4948 for access layer

[Brad Hedlund]

That is correct. The Nexus 2000 can be connected to two Nexus 5000's with an active/active virtual port channel (vPC).
However, if you do that, you cannot (yet) connect the Server to the Nexus 2000's with an active/active 802.3ad LACP NIC team.
You can obviously use active/standby teaming, or, active/active transmit load balancing (TLB) with active/standby receive.

If your Nexus 2000's are each singly homed to a single Nexus 500 like this:

N2K1------>N5K1
            ||
N2K2------>N5K2

then you CAN connect the Server to both N2K's with an active/active 802.3ad LACP team:

        N2K1------>N5K1
Server<             ||
LACP    N2K2------>N5K2

This architecture provides active/active with redundancy from the network through to the server.

Check out this link for more info on how that's done:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9670/configuration_guide_c07-543563.html


--
Brad Hedlund, CCIE #5530
Consulting Systems Engineer, Data Center
bhedlund at cisco.com
http://www.internetworkexpert.org



On Feb 3, 2010, at 9:13 AM, Manu Chao wrote:

> No
> 
> AFAIK vPC is already available on N5K/N2K, active/active with FEX should
> be possible:
> 
> Cisco Nexus 5000 NX-OS Software Rel 4.1(3)N2(1)
> 
> "A virtual port channel (vPC) allows links that are physically connected to
> two different Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches or Cisco Nexus 2000 Series
> Fabric Extenders to appear as a single port channel by a third device (see
> the following figure). The third device can be a switch, server, or any
> other networking device. Beginning with Cisco NX-OS Release 4.1(3)N1(1), you
> can configure vPCs in topologies that include Cisco Nexus 5000
> Seriesswitches connected to the Fabric
> Extender. A vPC can provide multipathing, which allows you to create
> redundancy by enabling multiple parallel paths between nodes and load
> balancing traffic where alternative paths exist"
> 
> R/
> Manu
> 
> On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 12:56 AM, scott owens <scottowens12 at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>>> 
>>>  1. Re: Nexus 2000 vs Catalyst 4948 for access layer
>>>     (chris at lavin-llc.com)
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:16:59 -0500
>>> From: chris at lavin-llc.com
>>> To: "Nick Hilliard" <nick at inex.ie>
>>> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
>>> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Nexus 2000 vs Catalyst 4948 for access layer
>>> Message-ID:
>>>       <c322407a5ca5c76b043fa62c4bee5476.squirrel at email.fatcow.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>>> 
>>>> wrt NX-OS vs. IOS, they are two different systems.  NX-OS is very young
>>> in
>>>> its development cycle; IOS is much more mature and has many more
>>> features.
>>>> 
>>>> Nick
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I'm curious why you suggest that the NX-OS is very young. My
>> understanding
>>> (I'm not a SAN guy) is that the NX-OS is just a move of bringing the MDS
>>> OS into a routing/switching combination with IOS.
>>> 
>>> I had the recent experience of a Nexus CPOC down in RTP. Going into it I
>>> was apprehensive about learning a new OS. But through the CPOC I learned
>>> that it's not that much different from IOS. Seemed like they did a decent
>>> job of importing/aliasing the IOS related commands. I didn't feel as lost
>>> within the CLI as I had expected.
>>> 
>>> -chris
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> We have about a dozen 2148Ts connected to 4 Nexus 5Ks and a couple of 7Ks
>> 
>> I would absolutely NOT pick the 2148Ts for just switching unless you had
>> some larger data center needs; they and their "parent" 5Ks don't route ..
>> .so we do some ( and we wanted to) vlan tagging on servers to bypass
>> routing.
>> 
>> I will say that "show log last 20" is worth every penny :)
>> 
>> They are stable if you hook them up right - currently you can not do
>> active/active with a FEX connected to multiple 5Ks & do LACP teaming to
>> servers.
>> 
>> Got question  - shoot them on over ...
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