Cisco 6500 VSS 1440...Makes One BIG Switch a bigger switch

As I went through my Google Reader the other day, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that I had gotten a few new hits on my Cisco tag section. Looking into this further turns out Cisco had a product announcement.

Low and behold what I had been waiting for was there. Cisco finally announces the VSS 1440 for the Cisco 6500. Ok some people are like what the @#%%^. What this means is you can now "stack" two 6500 chasis.

If you are familar with the WS-C3750 switch you will know what this technology is right off the bat. If you don't I will try to explain.

Basically, stacking technology is a way to join multiple standalone switches into one logical switch with one IP address and one routing instance. Lets say you log into a 6 switch 3750 stack. If you did a show run you would see one main configuration with the typical stuff but when you got down to the interface section you would see once you got past the first 48 ports you would then see Gi2/0/1 and so forth.

This gives you one place to configure all the ports instead of individually logging into each switch. This also give you the ability to link all the switches together without having to "daisy chain". Eliminating problems in that area. As well it gives you the ability to get better redundancy as well as (if I am not mistaken) an 2 x 4G Etherchannel.

Etherchanneling is taking several ports in this case 2 x four ports over one logical switch (6 physical switches) and bundling them together for a bigger pipe. This helps in reducing spanning tree traffic.

A typical configuration of a Ehterchannel would look similar to this:

int Gi1/0/49
!This creates int port-channel 1
! The int port-channel is where you configure your etherchanneled ports
channel-group 1 mode on

int Gi1/0/51
channel-group 1 mode on

int Gi6/0/49
channel-group 1 mode on

int gi 6/0/51
channel-group 1 mode on

! Then configure your int port-channel
! After configuring this it will pass the config down to the etherchanneled ports

int po 1
switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,11,12,13,14,15
switchport trunk native vlan 888

Make sure you do a no shut on the int po 1 after you configure it so that the configuration gets put on the ehterchanneled ports.

On the otherside of the Etherchannel you need to do the same thing on the other switch combine in an Ehterchannel it does not matter what the number you is just make sure it is not in use.

OK, if you get down here I am sorry I went on a rant there but a background would at least help out. The VSS 1440 would allow you to combing two 6500 chasis. This gives you 18 blades at your disposal (in a 6509).

You can then have one IP and one routing instance as well now you have essentially removed spanning-tree between these switches and now you can have 2 X 4G Etherchannels combing into one 8 G Etherchannel.

Etherchannels must go to the same switch, because essentially it is just a big cable. So if you logically have one switch....you can put all your ports hooked to either physical switch and combine all of them. Super through put.

Some other things when I was talking to my boss about this was that you could also use this with the IBM BladeCenter switches once they move to the 3750 chipset. Right now hte IBM BladeCenter Cisco Switch modules are physically two switches but if the stacking technology gets implemented there one logical switch and again some serious throughput in combination with the VSS 1440 on the 6500.

Thank you Cisco, thank you.

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Two movies that are just really good and makes perfect since.

• Dan in Real Life
• Martian Child
  

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