Cisco ace 4710 Standby

[mario-leitao]

Hi,

Can I have more than 2 ace 4710 in an active/standby scenario? I have two Dc´s with extended L2 so I would need to have high availabity between the two DC´s and two ace´s 4710 per DC.

[Kanwaljeet Singh]

Hi Mario,

Redundancy on ACE means that you have two same contexts on two different modules/appliances and form a redundancy group(FT group) with one as active and other as standby.

When you have two DC's and i am assuming at different locations you can have ACE appliances in redundancy pairs but i am not sure what do you exactly mean by extended L2.

Regards,

Kanwal

[mario-leitao]

But can I have 3 or 4 appliance in the same Ft group?

[Kanwaljeet Singh · Accepted solution]

Hi Mario,

You can have  more than 2 in the same FT group but you can only have two ACE modules/appliances for redundancy.

If you are thinking of ACE1 as Master, ACE 2 as standby1 and ACE3 and standby 3, then that is not possible.

Also, if you have to put the ACE devices, more than two in same FT group  in same chassis it will cause a problem because VMAC on ACE depends upon the ACE FT group and switch might learn the same VMAC from two different ports and hence a problem.

You might like to look at below restrictions and requirments in the document:

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Cisco_Application_Control_Engine_%28ACE%29_Troubleshooting_Guide_--_Troubleshooting_Redundancy#Configuration_Requirements_and_Restrictions

From the document:

"You can configure a maximum of two ACE modules (peers) in the same Catalyst 6500 series switch or in different chassis for redundancy. You can also configure a maximum of two ACE 4710 appliances for redundancy. Each peer ACE can contain one or more fault-tolerant (FT) groups".

Regards,

Kanwal