Cisco switch stacking (stackwise)

 Stacking is used to combine multiple physical switches into one logical switch.
 Some of switches that support stackwise are cisco 3750, 3800 series switches.
 Switches that support Stackwise will have 2 stack ports and use a special stacking
cable to connect the switches to each other. The bandwidth of this stacking cable
is 32Gbps.
 Each switch has two stacking connectors that are used to “daisy-chain” (loop) the
switches together. Each switch is connected to the one below it and the bottom
switch will be connected to the one on top.
 The Stackwise cable is like an extension of the switching fabric of the switches.
When an Ethernet frame needs to be moved from one physical switch to
another, the Stackwise “loop” is used. The advantage of using a cabled loop is
that you can remove one switch from the stack, the loop will be broken but the
stack will keep working.
 We can add maximum 8 switches into the stack.
 One switch in the stack becomes the master that does all “management tasks”
for the stack. All other switches are members / slaves. If the master fails, another
member will become the new master. Before the stack cable connect, each
switch will be master switch, election happen only after the stack cable
connectivity.
 To select a master, Stackwise uses an election process that checks for the
following criteria (in order of importance):
1. Switch priority (1-15): we can configure a priority to decide which switch
becomes the master. Higher is preferred.
2. Default Configuration: A switch that already has a configuration will take
precedence over switches with no configuration.
3. Hardware/software priority: The switch with the most extensive feature
set has a higher priority than another switch (for example: IP Services vs IP
base).
4. Uptime: The switch with the longest uptime.
5. MAC address: The switch with the lowest MAC address.
 Once the stack has been created, the configuration of the switches is the same as
if it were one single switch…they share the same management IP address,
hostname, etc.
 Switches will be reboot after connecting the stack cable b/w them.
Note: For the best practice keep the ISO version of all the switched in the stack, same
otherwise we can face issue in the master switch failover situation.
 Commands
show switch: will show switch number, mac, priority, H/W version and current state.
sw2(config)#switch 1 renumber 5: change the switch-2 number from 1 to 5. (Reboot
require)
sw1(config)#swich 1 priority 15: change swith-1 priority from 1 to 15.
There is no such configuration required in cisco stackwise, we just need to set the
priorities and plug the stack cable b/w switches.

VSS (Virtual switch system)

 VSS (Virtual Switching System) is a Cisco proprietary technique to create
a single logical switch out of two physical switches. Some of the switches
that support this are the 6500 series and 4500 series switches.
 VSS defines two physical Catalyst 6500 switches joined via a special link
called a Virtual switch link (VSL) running special hardware and
software that allows them to operate as a single logical switch.
 These are multilayer switches, chassis switches.
 There is no stack port in these switches so no stackwise option available.
 Active-Active Data plane with 1440 Gbps Switching capacity.
 Active-Hot standby control plane.

Benefits of VSS:
 Increase operational efficiency via Simplified network.
 Boost non-stop communication.
 Scale the system bandwidth capacity to 1.4 Tbps.
 Virtual Switch Architecture
VSL (virtual switch link):
 The virtual switch link is a special link joining each physical switch together -
 Only the 10GE ports on the specific modules can support a virtual switch link.
 A Virtual switch link bundle can consist of up to 8 x 10GE links.
 All traffic traversing the VS link is encapsulated with a 32 byte “virtual switch
header” containing ingress and egress switch port indexes, class of service (CoS),
VLAN number, and other important information from the layer-2 and layer-3
header.
 The control plane uses VSL for CPU-to-CPU communication while the data plane
uses VL to extend the internal chassis fabric to the remote chassis.

Virtual Switch Domain:

 A virtual switch domain ID is allocated during the conversion process and
represents the logical grouping the 2 physical chassis within a VSS.
 It is possible to have multiple VS domain throughout the network.
 The configurable value for the domain ID is 1-255.
 It is always recommended to use a unique VS domain ID for each VS domain
throughout the network.

Forwarding Operation:
In virtual switch mode, while only one control plane is active, both data planes (switch
fabric) are active, and as such, each actively participate in the forwarding of data.
Router MAC address:
  In standalone catalyst 6500 system, the router MAC address is derived from the
Chassis MAC EEPROM and is unique to each chassis.
 In virtual switch system, there is also only one single router MAC address. The
MAC address allocated to the virtual switch system is negotiated at system
initialization. Regardless of either switch being brought down or up, the same
MAC address will be retained such that neighboring network nodes and hosts do
not need to re-ARP for a new address.

EtherChannel concept
Multichassis EtherChannel (MEC):
 Prior to virtual switch, EtherChannel was restricted to reside within the same
physical switch.
 But in virtual switch environment, the 2 physical switches form a single logical
entity – therefore EtherChannel can now extended across the 2 physical chassis.

Operation Management
Virtual Switching system CLI:
 Only the active switch consoles are enabled for command interaction.
 The standby console is disabled and cannot be used for normal
operational purposes.
Slot/Port Numbering:
 After conversion, port definitions for switches within the virtual domain inherit
the chassis IP as port of their naming convention.
 Port numbering: <Chassis-ID> <slot-number> <port-number>
 Chassis-ID will always be either a “1” or “2”.
 High Availability
Dual-Active Detection:
Problem:
 IF the entire VSL bundle go down, the standby switch will go in active
state, creating dual active condition.
 Dual active leads to
o Two independent routers with same control plane information e.g.,
IP address, router ID etc.
Detection:
There are 2 mechanisms that we can use to detect and recover from a dual active
scenario:
1. Enhanced Port aggregation protocol (ePAgP)
2. Dal-Active detection over IP-BFD
 1. Using ePAgP:
 ePAgP provides a new TLV which uses MAC address of an active switch
as an ID to identify dual active detection. Only the active switch
originates ePAgP messages in normal mode.
 In normal operations all ePAgP neighbors reflects IP of an active switch
back upstream on both uplinks.

 Once the VLS bundle goes down switch 2 goes to active state. It starts
generating its own ePAgP message with its own ID via ePAgP
supporting neighbor to switch 1.

Recovery:
 Switch 1 detects that switch 2 is now also active, triggering dual active
condition thus switch 1 brings down all the local interfaces to avoid
network instability.
 Until VSL link restoration occurs, switch 1 will remain isolate from the
network: once the VSL link came UP, the role negotiation determines
 that switch 1 needs to come up in STAND_BY mode hence it reboots
itself; finally, all interfaces on switch 1 are brought online. And now
switch 1 will be in STAND-BY mode.
 NOTE: If any configuration change occurs during the dual active
recovery stage, the recovered system requires manual intervention of
either “reload” or “config-sync”

2. Using IP-BFD:
 Utilizes a direct point-to-point link connected to an interface on each
switch.
 Must have a unique IP address on each end of the link; BFD session
becomes operational only after VSL link failure.
 BFD session establishment triggers the dual active condition and
previously active switch undergoes to recovery mode like PAgP detection.
 Only use when ePAgP detection method is not available.

VSS configuration
Swich-1 configuration
#Switch virtual domain 12 (should be same on both switches)

#Switch 1 (configure switch number)

#Switch 1 priority 110 (higher is better to become active)

#Switch 2 priority 100

#Interface port-channel1

#Switch virtual link 1 (Make the port channel a VSL link)

#No shut

#Interface range gigethernet1/4-5 (select interface for VSL link)

#Channel-group 1 mode on (make bundle)

#No shut

#Switch convert mode virtual (after this command the active-standby elections will happen)

Yes

Swich-2 configuration
#Switch virtual domain 12

#Switch 2

#Switch 1 priority 110

#Switch 2 priority 100

#Interface port-channel2

#Switch virtual link 2

#No shut

#Interface range gigethernet1/4-5

#Channel-group 2 mode on

#No shut
#Switch convert mode virtual

Yes