HSRP - determining active router

[jeff.vargas]

Does anyone have any insight on determining the active router for HSRP? I don't mean how do you do it, I mean how would you determine active state for a group of 20 subnets? How would you go about determining subnet 1 should be active on router 1 and subnet 2 should be active on router 2? Is there any technical reasons I should consider?

Basically I have two 6500 distribution layer switches configured with a port-channel between them and they are connected to a bunch of access layer switches. I'm using HSRP on the 6500's. My first thought is to simply stagger the VLANS so lets say Vlan 10 is active on 6500 #1 and then Vlan 20 is active on 6500 #2 and so on.

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

The common design is to have STP root and HSRP active on the same switch. Most networks I have seen have STP root/HSRP active for all Odd numbered VLANs on one core/distribution and the other core for even numbered VLANs.

[jeff.vargas]

So, if on switch 1 I have

spanning tree vlan 10,30,50 priority 8196

and

spanning tree vlan 20,40,60 priority 16384

Switch 1 should be active for vlans 10,30 and 50 and on Switch 2 vlans 20,40,60 would be active. Is this correct? Of course on switch 2 the statements above would be reversed.

Thanks,

[glen.grant]

Thats correct and once it is setup if it is a native 6500 it's easy to check with the show spanning tree vlan xx and then do a show standby brief.

[Prashanth Krishnappa]

Yes.. Assuming there are no other switches in the network with lower/better priorities.

[jeff.vargas]

Thanks guys. This is exactly what I needed. I'm trying to rate the post but it doesn't seem to be working. I'll keep tryting and thanks again for the info.