[f-nsp] Question for Brocade/Foundry folk - Will the FastIron series ever get a FLOATING STATIC ARP feature, like the BigIron has?

[Robert Toth]

I am having my hands full with stability issues and trying to drive all
our traffic through our firewalls at our data center.  

Add to that the fact that the Foundry FastIron's  do NOT allow me to set
a GLOBAL STATIC ARP entry (what they call a FLOATING STATIC ARP on the
BigIron RX-series...), except BY PORT - which is contrary to using
anything like load balancers, H/A Application Delivery Controllers (aka:
Citrix MPX9500  ADC's), or in our case:  Active/Active Firewall
clusters.  

 

Cisco, Extreme Summit, etc - they all do the ARP {x} {IP-ADDRESS}
{MAC-ADDRESS}  (aka: FLOATING ARP) setting to set an IP against a
specific MAC even on their entry level switches... 

Foundry goes one step too far on the FastIron:  they force it against a
specific PORT as well, and as I have to share a common ARP/MAC between
my firewall ports for the Active-Active load-balancing H/A support on
two boxes in parallel... I can't do it properly without some serious
hacking and hairpinning techniques, which is what I have done per
another post I found on this list recently (it was specifically
targeting Microsoft's NLB support, but it was very similar to what I
needed here).  Seems to work ok, even though it ties up some extra ports
and vlans to make it happen.

 

So that's the question I need to get answered, and I hope someone at
Foundry/Brocade sees this as well... How can I set a FLOATING STATIC ARP
on a FastIron, just like many other switch manufacturers do, and that I
NEED to do in this kind of (very common) setup?  

Will it eventually become available on FastIron or will I have no choice
but to look at a BigIron for this feature?  Or live with my hairpin
hack?

 

Regards,

Robert Toth

Director of Information Technology Services

iPerceptions Inc

London - Montreal - New York - Toronto

www.iperceptions.com <http://www.iperceptions.com/> 

 

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