Stack and IRF compliance

[Sebblabla]

Hi everybody,

I'm working on a architecture where there are old devices as hp 2610-24-pwr (r10.06) and 5130(24-pwr (7.1). Before recommending them tho change their switchs (of course they must), i would like to improve temporarly the avaibility of the infrastructure.

The network is composed by :
2 x 5130 with IRF set up and working wellOne uplink from a 5130 to a 2610 and another uplink from 2610 to 2610.

Because it is old switches and 2610 does not support IRF but Stack technology, is it possible to improve the infrastructure like :
Keep 5130 IRF cluster
Setup a stack with the two 2610
Connect IRF and Stack together with LACP (2x1Gbps)

thanks for your advices

Seb

[parnassus]

The HP ProCurve 2610 Switch Series doesn't support "stacking" as creating a single logical switch made of a cluster of physical Swtiches (as IRF is), it supports only the "management stacking" feature:

"Stacking capability: single IP address management for a virtual stack of up to 16 switches, including the HP ProCurve Switch 2500 Series, 2510 Series, 2600 Series, 2610 Series, 2810 Series, 2900 Series, 3400cl Series, 3500l Series, 4200vl Series, 6108, 6200yl-24G-mGBIC, and 6400cl Series"

So the best you can do with that topology is to enhance the single link uplinks between 2610 and 2610 (creating a Trunk/LAG made of 2 or more member ports and using Dynamic/Static LACP trunk or Non-Protocol trunk) and between one 2610 and (one member of) the actual 5130 IRF Stack.

I don't believe that the HP ProCurve 2610 is able to support dt-lacp (Distributed Trunking switch-to-switch, proprietary extension to the IEEE 802.3ad Standard) other than the standard lacp (IEEE 802.3ad Standard) in order to distribute the Trunk (or Trunks) links originating from the 2610 to both the 5130 IRF Switches Stack's members concurrently (instead of terminating the possible Trunk against just one of them: coterminus).

Probably the best option you have now is to just enforce actual single link uplinks (2610<-- single link uplink -->2610<-- single link uplink --> one member Switch of the 5130 IRF Stack) aggregating more ports per uplink as said above...so your uplinks will be more resilient and will be able to carry more traffic (especially considering your topology) between all involved Switches.

Another thing you can try to do is to upgrade the (R.10.06, pre 2010?) running HP ProCurve 2610 software, actually R.11.116 (released in May 2016), valid for: J9085A, J9088A, J9086A, J9087A and J9089A.

[Sebblabla]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick and detail reply, it helps, i didn't notice about this stack features.

So you right i will suggest to increase the number of uplinks, then maybe and another upling between a 2610 and the 5130 irf that do not have yet a way to communicate with the 5130. So if they loose the first 2610, they loose both 2610. I will use Spanning-Tree to avoid loop. Do you see something special about STP topology ?

Thank you

[parnassus]

It's unclear.

Do you mean something like this:

5130 <----- IRF Stack -----> 5130
 |                            |
 |                            |
2610 (A)                     2610 (C) <- added as 3rd Switch
 |
 |
2610 (B)

or something like this (note the loop):

5130 <----- IRF Stack -----> 5130
 |                            |
 |                            |
2610 (A)                     2610 (C) <- added as 3rd Switch
 |                            |
 |                            |
2610 (B) <--------------------|

[Sebblabla]

Sorry,

Now it is like this :

5130A                      2610A
 |                                    |
 |                                    |
5130B<-------------> 2610B
 |
 |
5130C

And i think about something like this :

5130A <-------------> 2610A
 |                                    |
 |                                    |
5130B<-------------> 2610B
 |
 |
5130C