Cisco ACE VLAN mapping to Cat6500 Switch Ports

[cisco_realm]

Could anyone please explain, how do Cisco ACE VLANs get mapped to physical ports on the Cat6500 Switch Ports.

For e.g. lets says MSFC & ACE has 5 VLANs defined namely VLAN1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Every VLAN has a server farm. When these server farms are connected to Cat6500 switch ports, how does the physcial connectivity map to ACE VLANs (bridged mode).

Regards.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

In bridged mode you need 2 vlans per server farm because the ACE module is bridging between these vlans ie.

MSFC - vlan 10 - ACE - vlan 11

in the above example vlan 11 is the vlan that has the actual servers in it. So all the ports that have servers in this vlan on the 6500 will be configured

6500(config-if)# switchport mode access

6500(config-if)# switchport access vlan 11

For vlan 11 there is no SVI on the MSFC so if you do a "sh ip int br" on the 6500 you should not see an int vlan 11.

Vlan 10 does have an SVI on the MSFC but contains no servers. It is the vlan used for communication between the switch and the ACE module.

So if you have 5 server farms in your above example on vlans 1 - 5 none of these vlans should have an SVI on the MSFC. You will need to use another 5 unused vlans to pair them up eg

MSFC - vlan 6 - ACE - vlan 1

MSFC - vlan 7 - ACE - vlan 2

etc...

Hope this makes sense.

Jon