Best way to uplink a Cisco layer II switch to dual 8600's via SMLT?

[VOIPaintEASY]

We have had 3 years of gremlins with the Baystack 470/ 460 product line. We need to expand and I cannot bring myself to buy more product that is riddled with issues of NVRAM corruption, know issues after BOOS upgrades that require defaulting the stack and manually entering all config again, etc. Does anyone have experience with uplinking Cisco switch products to dual 8600's that run SMLT (1 uplink to each 8600,8600's connected to each other with IST trunks)

 

[leedsit]

Hi,

Why not use some Nortel 5510`s or 5520`s???? They Support MLT.

LEEroy
MCNE6,CCNP,CWNA,CCSA,Project+

 

[VOIPaintEASY]

Because I am tired of products with name starting with N wakign me up at night with out NOC calling saying a whole floor just went down again with the current Baystack stacks we have. (I have to assume the same engineers whole designed the 5500 series were involved in the 460/ 470 product line) I will not gamble again on Nortel as I know my odds are high with their switch products having OS bugs. If I am going to gamble I want better odds I may win. i know what my odds are with Nortel data clsoet switches...

See this thread that I did not start about Baystack relaibility. Have your CIO standing over you with 200 poeple on a whole floor wondering what happened and all you can do is poweer cycle the stack over and over until it comes up and then tell me you would buy more. Then go home and sleep at night knowing you have 10 other floors and more of the Baystack stacks in remote offices in other cities and countries that are liklely going to have these same issues at some point...

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1291718&page=1

 

[Kwazzy]

VOIP,

Nortel designed SMLT to connect to any device that can do IEEE 802-3ad(Link Aggregation). Fortunately we have not had the same headaches as you have with the 470s... (We have about 200 throughout our network.) But if you wish to look at the Cisco line, all you have to do is the same thing you did with the BS470/460s. Configure a MLT on the cisco, and same SMLT on the 8600s.

Personally, I have not tried this yet, but I could test this, as we have Cisco 2950s as well. However, we do run SMLT to servers using Etherchannel So, knowing that it works on the servers... I know it will work with the Cisco as well.

Good luck, and sorry you have had such a problem with the 470 line. I have only seen one issue with them. They soft boot where you loose managment on them for about 5 minutes. It does a soft boot and comes back. However, it never impeeds the traffic to the connections on the box... it only affects the managment of the switch. Nortel's requires us to hook a console connection to the switch and run it while this happens... (Since it is soo random, and does not hit at any measurable rate, we are stuck wondering how far this will take us until we loose the whole switch.

 

[VOIPaintEASY]

Kwazzy, see my post I just added about the MGMT address going to sleep once per year. It may be the issue you see occasionally.

 

[VOIPaintEASY]

Kwazzy, What ver. of BOSS are you on? Also, have you done multiple ver. upgrades over time or are these fresh stacks? We have been told the config corruption is a know issue after multiple BOSS upgrades on mixed 460/ 470 stacks. Also, do you run mixed 460/ 470 stacks?

 

[Kwazzy]

In most cases we have upgraded these when configured and left them to run the code they are on. I know on several of the switches we are seeing this on are on versions 3.0.0.5 (Beginning of the Boss code).

We have avoided the "Hybrid Stacks" since we had issues with the Business Policy Switches 2000(Old BS460s) stacking with the 450s. The BPS2000s were the original BS460s until they remade the BS460 to the PoE switches of the 450 family. We started having issues when upgrading and other stacking issues. That is when we decided to only run Pure Stacks... aka all one switch types.

 

[VOIPaintEASY]

I think you have the right stack setups by not having mixed stacks. Unfortunately we spent $1.2M for our install which included a 100% Nortel Professional services portion where they designed all aspects of the data network including specing 470/ 460 mixed stacks. Now we have an unstable data network that also by they way supports 100% of our voice network running VOIP with switch stacks that crap the bed randomly.

 

[Kwazzy]

Yes, I see Nortel's down fall of the mixed baystacks... they claim it works fine. But you and I have seen the down side of it. I still agree that Stacking is the way to go, but now, my management team has issues with stacking. With that said, I have seen solid performance of the 470s stacked in the pure mode. If you are still considering the move, try half and half... dump the BS460's and connect your 470s up in a pure mode. Then if you want to try Cisco's, then you are only buying a limited amount. (Replacing with Cisco where you need stacks from merger of the 470s into pure stacks.)

Now, if you used the BS460s for the PoE aspect, then you may want to consider going with the 470 PoE. There you are purchasing less, and still have the capability of stacking 470s.

Or replace them all with Cisco L2, and to answer the original question, you should be fine.

Good Luck... :-D

 

[VOIPaintEASY]

I have 2 of the BS470-POE. It started a whole new mess with an existing stack when we tried to merge it in. I agree. I would assume a pure 470 stack would work fine. I have leaned not to assume with Nortel hardware. Basic houskeeping functions like saving configs and clean OS upgrades go back many, many years in making reliable hardware. (1015 at least) I cannot believe they can not get this right. I also hate it when my peers in the server admin team call our data network gear "Kmart switches" because they go down randomly and we run around with no idea of why and what can be done to prevent another event in 3-4 weeks. That is not enterprise class switch gear in my book. Glad to hear you are running ok, though I would advise your staying on older BOSS is likely part of it. Guess what? If you ever want to add a 470-POE to a stack guess what you need to do? (upgrade BOSS)

 

[Kwazzy]

lol, We have a couple 470-PoEs... I like the first patch that was released... it randomly reboots. We are running fw: 3.6.0.6 sw:3.6.2.04

We have not had an issue with them (*knock on wood) yet. We have been running them since April. Solid code for us, if you are looking for a recommendation.