[c-nsp] Alternate setup for "better" HA

[John Elliot]

Hi Guys,

About to roll out a new "mini-pop" witth a a pair of 2851's and pair of 2960's - They will be handling ~50 ethernet tails from a couple of carriers via individual vlans on trunk ports from carriers->2960(So 2960 only does L2), then trunking those vlans up to 2851 for L3(Tails will be a mix of vrf+Inet)....the 2851 also will connect to the rest of our network(MPLS/MP-BGP)

Our "usual" setup would be to have a 2851 + 2960 as "active", and manually copy the config across to the spare 2851+2960, and if one of the primary fails, it would require swapping cables....not ideal.

Hoping someone has some suggestions on an alternate setup to what we currently do to provide a little more "auto failover" - hsrp on the 2851's would require /29's per client tail and also virtual ip per tail?(again, not ideal)

I've attached a diag that I hopes better illustrate our "current" setup(hope its permitted)...i.e. router on a stick.

Thanks in advance.