New HP3800 deployment / communication problem

[Gearbone]

I am attempting to deploy 4 HP3800 J9574A switches. They are connected together with Fiber Optic, 10GB HP modules.

Existing network consists of a SMC Tiger Switch and a Linksys/Cisco SRW2024

I've got a few issues going on. For initial setup I went through the setup guide and connected via serial and used CLI to configure the switches to match the IP addresses of my current network. However, even with the 4 new HP's connected together and isolated by themselves, I am unable to ping/communicate with all of them from a laptop that is set to match the IP scheme. So switches have been set to x.x.x15-18 - PC set to x.50. Can't ping, telnet, etc into them. Can communicate just fine via serial.

As soon as connect one of the new switches to the existing network, within just a few seconds I lose network connectivity, ping and communication with the existing network. The new switches respond for about 1-2 pings then dump. I have a ticket in with HP but no response as of yet to my setup issue. My knowledge of command line troubleshooting is limited but shouldn't I be able to communicate with these switches even with them off the current/existing network? Is there an obvious setting I am missing.

Thanks much in advance.

[Chrisd131313 · Accepted solution]

Hi Gearbone,

Have you setup the OOBM (out of band management) ports on the 3800s? I would suggest configuring these ports up and using these to connect to the switch. You should not have any issues when using these. I am assuming you have configured the IP addresses on the correct VLAN for communicating across your network?

I have a couple of 3800s in production and have no such issues with communicating with them, I use OOBM for ssh and set an IP address on the VLAN for radius comms.

When you connect the switches to your netwokr, you dont happen to have Spanning-Tree bpdu-protection enabled on the ports you are connecting the switches to? Do you get any log entries on the upstream switch you connect the 3800s to?

[krillean]

Give us config for every switch, how they are connected to eachother exactly and what firmware you use.

Best Regards // Kristian Modess

[Gearbone]

Thanks for your help. This helped in fixing my communication problem. It ended up being a device causing a loopback but enabling management assisted. Thank you

[Chrisd131313]

No problem Gearbone, gladto hear you got it all sorted out :)