topic Re: High Availability & Load Balancing setup in Switches, Hubs, and Modems

High Availability & Load Balancing setup

Alessandro_78 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:12:46 GMT

Hi all.
I'm planning a setup like this (see attached drawing).

All switches are Procurve 2610.

On the server there is a dual port ethernet and I want to configure bonding with load-balancing capability.

Is this setup correct?
How should I configure switches?
Should I add a trunk between SW 1 and SW 2?
I haven't gigabit ports available on that switches to do the trunk.

Thanks.

Re: High Availability & Load Balancing setup

Matt Hobbs — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:43:40 GMT

You could configure TLB type of load balancing on the server (trasmit only load balancing). The switches don't support split trunking which is what you'd need for true 2-way load balancing on the server.

For your Core switches, you'd want them to be running XRRP or VRRP for L3 redundancy. The 2610 does not have this feature. The 2610 will provide L2 redundancy via MSTP, but not L3. You should look at using the 5400/3500 with Premium Edge License for your L3 redundancy. Possibly 3400/5300 if you're on a tight budget.

Re: High Availability & Load Balancing setup

Alessandro_78 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:52:58 GMT

Thanks for the reply.
Core switches are connected to my upstream firewall. On that firewall I have VRRP configured.

I need to balance outgoing traffic, so i think that VRRP on core switches is not necessary.

I can't configure a non-protocol trunk between multiple switches?

Without that trunking, if i'll configure server to do bonding with balance-tlb or, better, balance-alb (that doesn't require switch configuration because it 'intercept' arp request and it will reply with a load-balanced mac address) should I archieve what I need?

Should I make an ISL between SW 1 and SW 2? I can't do that...

Re: High Availability & Load Balancing setup

cenk sasmaztin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:11:48 GMT

Hi Alessandro

imposible L3 redundancy on 2610 switch you can use only L2 redundancy on 2610

cenk

Re: High Availability & Load Balancing setup

Alessandro_78 — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:24:38 GMT

Ok for L2, but I don't want L3 redundancy.

Trunk should be L2...
Is possibile to have trunking with multiple switches...

My question is: without IntraSwitchLink, (ISL) can I do bonding (on the server) with tlb?
Doing so, server will transmit using both switches in a load balancing mode...