Routing and Stacking Procurve 2910al's...

[fatmcgav]

HI there,

We are in the process of configuring 3 2910al-24's in a new deployment as our core network stack.

We've configured the 3 switches as follows:
Switch 1 - Default gateway for all devices:
Default VLAN (ID 1) - Ports 1-4, IP 10.0.31.254
DMZ VLAN (ID 2) - Ports 1-2 & 13-20, IP 172.16.31.254
Proxy-ARP is enabled on both VLANs.

Switch 2:
Default VLAN (ID 1) - Ports 1-4, IP 10.0.31.253
DMZ VLAN (ID 2) - Ports 1-2 & 13-20, IP none

Switch 3:
Default VLAN (ID 1) - Ports 1-4, IP 10.0.31.252
DMZ VLAN (ID 2) - Ports 1-2 & 13-20, IP none

All are part of the same stack, with switch1 as the commander.

Spanning tree and IP Routing are enabled on all 3 switches.

All 3 switches are then cascaded together using standard Cat 5e cables in ports 1-4.

However we're having issues with a couple of points...
1) How to route between subnets - even with 1 device in each VLAN on switch 1... All I keep getting is "Net not found" when trying to ping across the VLANs...

2) How to keep working even if switch 1 - the default gateway for most devices - dies?

I've read through the various manuals and cant find anything obvious...

Any ideas?

Cheers
Gavin

 

[cajuntank]

Ok... let's use some HP vernacular here and make sure I'm understanding your current setup. You are stating you have ports 1-4 in VLAN1 on each switch, but then you state you have ports 1-2 in VLAN2 on each switch. You have all 3 switches cascaded together in ports 1-4.... So a little confused on how your switches are actually connected to each other for one thing. Some clarification is needed since I'll now be making some assumming statements.

"ip routing" has to be enabled to make the switch routing capable. Switch 1 would route between both VLANs if ip routing is enabled. Switch 2 and Switch 3 only have an IP address assigned to VLAN1, so unless you have ports "tagged" between the switches, then the layer 2 VLAN2's don't talk to each other.

You would have to either have switches that support VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) in which the hosts are referencing just the single logical IP address of the two or more physical switches (also would have to have at some point dual or better cable connections running from those hosts or access switches to connect to the VRRP pair).

Depending on that dual cable connectivity, you have tons of variables to address. NIC teaming, if can't team, then different subnets specified for each NIC, then there would be routing or using routing protocols like OSPF or RIP, etc... using VRRP cuts down on a few of these variables, but still some to address.

Sadly, the 2910's are not VRRP capable... I believe the first model up the Procurve list that supports VRRP is the 3500 series and that even takes an additional Premium License which also gets you OSPF.