03-03-2009 01:15 PM - edited 03-06-2019 04:21 AM
All,
I've got a situation that involves Microsoft's cluster service. It moves a Sql server to another physical server in case of a failover. The sql server's IP address doesn't change, but the mac address changes depending on the server that it moves to.
The problem that we're having is that the arp cache isn't timing out in the switch. Microsoft says that it's because the switch isn't forwarding gratuitous arp packets. How do I enable this?
I found that I can do an "ip arp gratuitous local", but I'm not sure that's going to do what I want.
Thanks,
John
03-03-2009 01:32 PM
You can use "arp timeout" command on the vlan interface on the router to change the arp timeout.
Thanks,
Mohamad
03-03-2009 01:34 PM
Mohamad,
We've literally let these servers sit for a day, mainly because we didn't know they "moved", and it still didn't time out. I'm not sure changing the timeout value will resolve the issue.
Thanks,
John
03-03-2009 01:34 PM
ARP provides IP communication within a Layer 2 broadcast domain by mapping an IP address to a MAC address.
You can't map multiple MACs to an IP so for this to work, the server needs to release the MAC address from the switch table. This is often triggered when the device is powered down. If the device didn't release the MAC address properly, then the switch will wait until the mac-address-table aging time removes the stale entry. By default is set to 5 minutes:
HTH,
__
Edison.
03-03-2009 01:38 PM
Edison,
It doesn't work. We've let the mac address table age out, and you still can't ping the device until you manually clear arp on the switch.
Here's MS explanation:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244331/EN-US/
Thanks,
John
03-03-2009 01:53 PM
Gratuitous ARP is enabled by default on switches and all devices within that Vlan will receive it.
What you are unable to do with Cisco switches is Gratuitous ARP over different subnets.
I don't think that's the case here.
So, you are saying that manually clearing the ARP table fixes the problem?
If you do a show ip arp before manually clearing the table, the MAC-to-IP mapping still points to the old MAC address?
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Edison.
03-03-2009 01:55 PM
Yes, but I found this article that suggests a different IOS fixes my problem:
This one says that .SE2 resolves it, and we're running SE1.
Thanks,
John
03-03-2009 02:24 PM
Edison,
I didn't realize that I didn't tell you something, and this may affect this also.
The vlan SVI has multiple subnets on it:
10.125.99.1 secondary
10.128.100.1 secondary
10.129.100.1 secondary
10.125.100.1 primary
The server is on the 10.125.100.0/24 subnet, and I'm thinking that it has something to do with the multiple subnets on the vlan 1 svi.
Thanks,
John
03-03-2009 02:25 PM
They are all part of the same Layer2 broadcast domain thus you aren't doing any inter-vlan switching.
I believe the article you posted may be the reason why it isn't working for you.
__
Edison.
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