Best way to implement VTP to already configured switches?

[Sean McQuade]

Hi guys,

I have a site with 2 core switches and then about 20 edge switches hanging off this. At the minute all the VLANs are statically assigned on each switch but customer wants to implement VTP. The way I was going to go about this was to:

• Set all the edge switches to mode transparent
• Configure VTP domain and version on the core switches
• Configure VTP domain and version on the edge switches, then set mode to client

I assume I can also set both core switches as VTP server without issues so VLAN information will still be available in the event of a switch failure? They both have an indentical VLAN list at the minute so doesn't really matter which one has a higher RC and propogates.

[Latchum Naidu · Accepted solution]

Sean,

The plan what you have is looks good.
But why you want go with VTP I would highly recommend keep the edge switches in transperant mode I sean lot of outages due to VTP.
If it is highly concern then you are good to go with your plan.

Apart from your plan make sure the configuration revision number on the edge ones lesser than core. of course this may not cause anything as long as you kept them in transperant mode but just wanted to make sure everything is taken place before causing any issues.

Please rate the helpfull posts.

Regards,
Naidu.

[Sean McQuade]

Hi Naidu - I agree. I implemented the original install and chose not to use VTP, but the customer will be providing management and first line support through their own IT team and they want to have a central point of administration for VLANs going forward.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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Posting

VTP clients also share their VLAN database, so before flipping a transparent mode to client mode you may want to insure your current revision is > 1.

To make VTP a little more difficult to accidentally break you might also want to consider using VTP passwords or VTP version 3.