Connecting 4510R to 4506. How to handle SUP

[johnvojtech]

I have a 4510R with redundant sup's, and I want to connect the 4510R sup to 4506. So when I connect 1 sup to one fiber port on the 4506, and the other sup to the other port on the 4506, is the traffic passed back and forth only 1GB? Can i trunk the 2 ports on the 4510R even though they are in different sup,s? To get higher throughput? If I use 2 ports on 1 sup, and it fails, I have really no redundancy. Any thoughts here?

[gpulos]

for true redundancy it is best practice to have:

switch1sup1port1 ---->>> switch2sup2port1

switch1sup2port1 ---->>> switch2sup1port1

this way, if sup 1 dies in any switch connectivity is still available via the 2nd sup. (both switches must have dual sups of course)

it is possible to setup an etherchannel and/or trunk between the two different switches/sups. (do the switches use IOS or CatOS?; IOS example below:)

etherchannel:

switch1>int range g1/0-1>channel-group 1 mode on

switch2>int range g1/0-1>channel-group 1 mode on

trunk:

switch1>int range g1/0-1>switch trunk encap nonegotiable dot1q; switch mode trunk

switch2>int range g1/0-1>swith trunk encap nonegotiable dot1q; switch mode trunk

see this link for more info:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/products_installation_and_configuration_guides_list.html

[johnvojtech]

Would this still work since the standy sup is not really active? The redundant Sup is powered on, but is not actively participating in switching. So would trunking the redundant Sups actually get me 2GB of bandwidth?

[gpulos · Accepted solution]

the GB ports of a supervisor are always active unless shutdown/disabled, even if the supervisor they reside on is in standby mode.

you can build a trunk with both GB ports from both switches for a 2GB link.

spanningTree will view this as one logical link and should not block any of the ports of this trunk if configured properly. verify this by "show spann" command after you build the trunk. (all ports should be in forwarding mode)(can also use the 'show interface trunk' command to view the trunk status; IOS command; CatOS is 'show trunk')

[johnvojtech]

Thanks for the info.