Basic 5400 setup with vlans

[Kevin Furilla]

Hello,
I have a 5406 and a handful of 2800 series switches. I want to have 10 vlans across the 2800s that can talk to each other, a management vlan and spanning tree. I also have Procurve Manager Plus.

What I am confused about is the IP addressing, the procurve server, and how the 2800s fit in. I've read through the HP documentation, and it's been useful getting each component to work, but I must be missing some concepts.

Q1 Should the PCM Plus server be on the Management vlan? It seems like when I specify that this vlan is the management vlan, I can't leave that network. This limits the server from receiving updates from the internet.

Q2 My biggest frustration is the IP addressing. I create all the vlans and assign the IP addresses, but where should the IP of the switch be located? If seems like each switch must have a unique IP on the setup menu, but if I try to give it an address on the management vlan it tells me that it is invalid. Should the switches IP address be unique, and which vlan should it be on?

Q3 The routing on the 5400 seems a little strange. I can enable it, and the routing table gets filled, but not until I enable RIP, can I routing between vlans. It would seem to me that from what the routing table contains that the routing should work without RIP. Is this true, or am I mistaken?

Q4 The PCM Plus server was seeing my 5400 and a single 2800 switch at one point. I updated the 2800 software and now I can't get it seen again. I am using SNMPV3 but PCM tells be it isn't working. I ended up wiping the switch config out and setting it up again in case I made a stupid mistake(which is still possible) but it didn't work.

I know this is a lot to ask, but I left work at 3am yesterday and I don't think I can read the HP manuals again. Any help would be appreciated.

Kevin

[Matt Hobbs · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin,

1. The 'management' VLAN is a special type of VLAN that will not be routable to other VLANs. Since you have a requirement to access the Internet in this VLAN, I would suggest that you simply use 'ip authorized-managers' instead.

e.g.
To Authorize Manager Access. This command authorizes manager-level access for any station with an IP address of 10.28.227.0 through 10.28.227.255:
ProCurve(config)# ip authorized-managers 10.28.227.101 255.255.255.0 access manager

This is probably the last thing I would start configuring though, get everything else up and running first.

Also, I would put my PCM Server into this VLAN.

2. On your 5400, each VLAN will need a unique IP address in a different subnet. These IP addresses will be the default gateway of the client machines, and can also be used to manage the 5400 (i.e, you can telnet to these addresses).
vlan 1
ip address 10.0.0.1/24
vlan 2
ip address 10.0.1.1/24
vlan 3
ip address 10.0.2.1/24
etc.

Each 2800 only needs one unique IP address in the management VLAN. I would suggest using VLAN 1 for this.
2800-1# vlan 1
2800-1(vlan-1) ip address 10.0.0.2/24
2800-2# vlan 1
2800-2(vlan-1) ip address 10.0.0.3/24

(Once again don't actually bother using the special secure 'management' VLAN option. I'm referring to it as a management VLAN but not actually setting one).

3. You should not need to enable RIP on the 5400 as you have suggested. You should only need to enable 'ip routing'.

4. With the latest firmware on the 2800, there is a new bug that breaks SNMPv3. For now use SNMPv2 instead or roll it back to the previous version firmware.


Matt

[Kevin Furilla]

Thanks for the help. My issues had to do with a few key changes that I made after reading your response.Thanks again.