TFTP Server redundancy?

[ADB100]

I recently saw what I thought was strange behaviour with a Cisco 7960 IP Phone and DHCP option 150. The DHCP Server is configured with option 150 configured as an array and multiple IP addresses (two) have been entered with a preference order.
My understanding was that the phone would receive the list of TFTP servers via option 150 and attempt to download the relevent file. If the 1st TFTP server didn't respond or TFTP wasn't enabled it would try the 2nd TFTP server received via option 150. The actual primary TFTP server was disconnected from the network and the 7960 wouldn't boot and reported TFTP timeouts - is this normal?

If I cycle through the Network Configuration via the settings button on the phone I see option 8 TFTP Server 1 and the IP address that is 1st in the list of the option 150. Further down option 32 says Alternate TFTP NO, I can obviously edit this and manually enter a 2nd TFTP server IP address. I am hoping it isn't a manual thing to have redundant TFTP servers?

Thanks

Andy

 

[MG2005]

do you have TFTP service turned on for both servers? If not you can assign anything you want for TFTP in option 150 it won;'t matte runless teh service is active on the server(s) in question

another good thing I like to do is specifiy a reverse order of TFTP servers for each voice Vlan so half access TFTP server 1 as primary, the other half access tftp 2 as primary

 

[ADB100]

After a bit of a re-think about what actually happened on the customer site I think it was several things that happened/were fixed....

1. The TFTP service wasn't started on Either Server listed in DHCP Option 150....

2. The CallManager servers were referred to by name but not in configured on the DNS servers

I have since tested this in the lab with the option 150 as an array with multiple TFTP servers listed and it does indeed failover to the redundant TFTP server if the primary server times out or the service is stopped.

Thanks

Andy

 

[MG2005]

1. The TFTP service wasn't started on Either Server listed in DHCP Option 150....

this was your problem

if using IP addresses the DNS portion prob wouldnt matter