Question regarding cabling 2510G switches together

[oysterman]

Hi all,

We have 2 x 2510G-48 switches (for redundancy), which are joined together using one of the dual personality ports (port 45) via CAT6 ethernet cable.

We dual home our servers, one ethernet connection to switch 1 and the second ethernet connection to switch 2. Our network cards are teamed, using one connection at a time (NFT with preference).

We have a number of VLANS (which are duplicated across both switches), using untagged ports for the actual server connections. These VLANS also have the link cable (port 45) configured as a tagged port, to allow the traffic to pass between the VLANS on the 2 switches.

This all works well.

We have the same exact configuration on a second site (DR).

We have just purchased an Ethernet private line connection (Layer 2 circuit) to link these sites together.

My question is how do I connect the switches at the different sites together? The switches on the same sites are connected together (which provides protection against switch failure), however we haven't connected the switches across sites before.

We only have 1 circuit (so 1 x RJ45 at each end).

At each site, our different firewall interfaces are placed into the various VLAN networks that we have setup. We have VLANS configured for our different environments e.g. EXTERNAL, DMZ, PROTECTED etc.

I was planning on creating a new VLAN on each of the switches called PRIVATELINK or something similar in the same way as I have created the other VLANS (using untagged ports for the firewall interface connection and the new layer 2 circuit connections, and tagging port 45 so that the switches on the same sites can see each other and pass traffic between VLANS).

I would like to double check that by doing this and by putting the new circuit's ethernet connection into switch 1/site 1 and the other end into switch1/site 2 (into the new VLAN) that this won't cause any loops that could bring the networks down for any reason?

Basically I would like to have a dedicated / seperate network at each site (using the existing switches and by using VLANS) with one cable connecting the two locations together, with devices at each site on this new VLAN being able to talk to each other as if they were on the same site. I will then configure the spare firewalls interfaces at each site to be on the same IP address range which will provide the routing capabilities to allow the different subnets at the 2 locations to communicate with each other (via firewall rules).

Hope this makes sense?

Any help would be great.

Many Thanks

John.

[oysterman]

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

John

[oysterman]

I suppose what I'm asking is if the switches on each site (before i link them together) use the same vlanID numbers, when I link the sites together will traffic automatically start moving between the sites as they have the same vlan I'd numbers?