Dual Data Centres 200miles apart - L2 trunking/Gigabit, is this ok?

[tholmes]

Hello All,

We've 2 data centres, one primary the other DR, we've also 2 Gigabit fibre links between the 2, 200 miles apart.

To keep the PIX Active/Standby roles across the sites, I'm investigating the idea of linking the 2 datacentres with trunks at L2.

Is this good practice?, I know in the pre-Gigabit days this was frowned upon but these days it would make sense and make design much easier - any thoughts appreciated

Regards Tony

[sean]

Will you have separate internet connnections for each of the sites?

[tholmes]

Hello Sean,

Thanks for the response.

I'm planning to have the same Internet subnet at both sites which would make PIX FO much simplier

Cheers Tony

[phil.davenport]

Be careful with spanning tree and L2 links between your primary and DR. If spanning-tree were to have issues at your primary datacentre causing an outage it could also take secondary with it and vice versa.

--Phil

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[tholmes]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the reply

With that in mind I could adjust the Spanning Tree timers to be more tolerant.

I can't think of any other way to provide PIX FO facility

Cheers Tony

[nyr.hakeem-habeeb]

Hi,

you could also explore possibilities with Flex-Links and/or Link-state tracking much better convergence than STP.

Thanks

NHH