Convert Catalyst 6500 VTP based network to Nexus 7000's

[gvb]

I am migrating a network from 6500 cores to Nexus 7000 cores.

Currently, the 6500's are VTP servers, and all downstream devices are VTP clients.

NX-OS does not support VTP server, so my plan was to simply disable VTP everywhere.

If I first verify that all devices on the network have a current VTP revision, and then change to transparent mode from either client or server, the existing VLAN database will be preserved right?

I know this is a pretty simple, fundamental question, but I don't have the ability to verify this and I needed a quick answer :)

I assume this is what others are doing when migrating from 6500's to 7000's in an environment using VTP?

[Jon Marshall]

"If I first verify that all devices on the network have a current VTP revision, and then change to transparent mode from either client or server, the existing VLAN database will be preserved right?"

Yes, the switch will then write the vlans into the configuration.

"I assume this is what others are doing when migrating from 6500's to 7000's in an environment using VTP?"

Don't know as i haven't had the chance to use the Nexus switches yet :-)

Jon

[gvb]

Thanks Jon...

Nexus or not, if you were told you had to migrate from a network using VTP servers at the core, to new core devices that didn't support VTP server mode, is this how you would approach it? :)

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

To be honest it depends on how many switches there are in the network. If you had a lot of switches and there was no specific requirement to run VTP transparent then you could quite easily promote 2 of your other switches to be VTP servers and just leave the core switches in VTP transparent mode.

Personally i think in data centres etc. VTP transparent is a more secure and less error prone way to go, error prone in the sense of overwriting the vlan database.

But if you have a lot of switches then you may well find the VTP transparent setup becomes too much of a management issue.

Jon

[gvb]

Makes sense! Thanks.