[AusNOG] Dell powerconnect and cisco stp

[Alex Samad - Yieldbroker]

Hi

So where I was in my main DC

Stacked 3750 -> connect to 2 x 8024f

The 8024f were for iSCSI

My plan was to stack the 8024f and the setup a link between DC's with the 8024F with 2x SFP+ connections

I wanted to get a working STP solution in place.

I look at the Rapid-PVST+ (cisco )  -> MST (Dell) setup working 
I found this document 
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/white_papers/20083170/download.aspx

Somebody at dell did some testing.  It talks about the different bpdu's 

Basically this didn't work for me as I wasn't trunking vlan 1 and also it had a high convergence time, it explains why and recommends MST to MST for faster convergence.

The tell-tale for me was seeing 2 root bridges :)

My test environment was close to the production but
2 x cisco's (non stacked in prod there are stacked)
2  x 8024F (stacked)

So I planned out my MST region, setup some MSTi, I am still not trunking vlan1

I have let the switches work out which wants to be the root bridge. I will be changing that.

But now I have all my ports open and the blocking is happening at the vlan on the port. Nice side effect of using MST. Convergence is a lot faster and issues on one vlan no longer affect the other vlans.

Alex



> -----Original Message-----
> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-
> bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Chris Ricks
> Sent: Friday, 11 January 2013 9:48 AM
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Dell powerconnect and cisco stp
> 
> Thanks for sharing this Alex.
> 
> An excellent bit of information to have. The amount of reading my team and
> I did when we were doing our Cisco -> Juniper switch migration took up a lot
> more time than the actual migration.
> 
> We found that getting decent, real-world details of integration between
> Cisco switches using Cisco-proprietary STP modes and non-Cisco switches
> (even those claiming to support Rapid-PVST+ and similar) was surprisingly
> hard to come by.
> 
> What sort of network impact did you see as you made the changes?
> 
> - Chris
> On 11/01/13 09:36, Alex Samad - Yieldbroker wrote:
> > Just thought I would follow up on this.
> >
> > Did a lot of reading and testing
> >
> > Seems like the suggested way forward was to move everything to MSTP
> >
> > So I have configured my cisco's and my dell to MSTP and all seems to be
> working well.
> >
> >
> >
> > Alex
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Alex Samad - Yieldbroker
> >> Sent: Thursday, 20 December 2012 5:46 PM
> >> To: Alex Samad - Yieldbroker; ausnog at ausnog.net
> >> Subject: RE: Dell powerconnect and cisco stp
> >>
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> Let me add (should have add that before)
> >>
> >> I have MST configured on the dell and the multi vlan stp on the cisco.
> >>
> >> A
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-
> >>> bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Alex Samad - Yieldbroker
> >>> Sent: Thursday, 20 December 2012 5:35 PM
> >>> To: ausnog at ausnog.net
> >>> Subject: [AusNOG] Dell powerconnect and cisco stp
> >>>
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> Wondering if anyone the list has been through the pain of connecting
> >>> up powerconnect (dell)  switches to cisco switches and enabling per
> >>> vlan
> >> stp ...
> >>> If you can talk to be off list
> >>>
> >>> Thanks
> >>>
> >>> A
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> AusNOG mailing list
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> 
> 
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