Nortel Split Multi Link Trunking (SMLT) and HP Virtual Connect Flex-10

[chuckk281]

Taha had a customer question about Nortel equipment and HP Virtual Connect Flex-10:

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Hi All,

I have a customer who is planning to connect his VC Flex-10 to Nortel Core switches configured as SMLT (Split Multi Link Trunking). Has anyone tried this out before?

From what the customer tells me, the two core switches will act as one big switch, so both Flex-10 modules will see only one switch even though they are physically wired to two separate Nortel Switches (Switch Clustering - http://community.nortel.com/go/blogs/enterpriseblog/2007/12/06/cisco-vss-too-little-too-late).

Any best practices on how Flex-10 should be configured in such an environment?

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Markus had some experience:

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Had that same question a while ago… My customer didn’t use SMLT, just MLT but the process in doing so should be similar. SMLT is comparable to CISCO VSS –

In both cases VC sees the two switches as one. Still keep in mind that all links, that belong to a LACP (MLT or SMLT) need to end up on the same VC module.

This is the config of my customer on the switch, before these steps you have to enable LACP for the whole switch (don’t know out of my head right now where, but I could look it up if you want me to)

UG-RZ:5# config

UG-RZ:5/config# vlan 179 ports add 3/35,3/2

UG-RZ:5/config# vlan 603 ports add 3/35,3/2

UG-RZ:5/config# vlan 730 ports add 3/35,3/2

UG-RZ:5/config# ether 3/2,3/35 lacp key 17

UG-RZ:5/config# ether 3/2,3/35 lacp aggregation true

UG-RZ:5/config# ether 3/2,3/35 lacp enable

UG-RZ:5/config# mlt 17 create

UG-RZ:5/config# mlt 17 lacp key 17

UG-RZ:5/config# mlt 17 lacp enable

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Any other comments or suggestions?