SHARIFUL's TECH BLOG

Now it is time for the elephant in the room in the stacking series, which is called MLAG (multi chassis link aggregation). Vendors like Arista, Juniper, Extreme Networks, Cisco uses this as stacking method in their switches. Again this article is not a technical deep dive about MLAG, but rather looks at how it is configured in Arista switches. Let's define our network constraints; the example has following characteristics - Two Arista switches will run peering between them and will form MLAG. Two Cisco test switches will form multichassis link-aggregation with Arista switches. They will simulate the client connection. From test switches, we will test connectivity by using a vlan interface over the link-aggregated interfaces. Our network topology looks like this -  Fig 01 - Arista MLAG Topology Two Arista switches SW-U01 and SW-U02 will use interface eth6 and eth7 for forming MLAG peering. Then they will run LACP based link-aggregation with Cisco test switch...

HP also produces another line of switches which are called procurve switches. After HP's acquisition of Aruba Networks, those procurve switches are marketed as Aruba switches. Some of the Aruba switches support stacking. And it is called: VSF - Virtual Switching Framework. Again, I will not cover the stacking architecture, I will show only how to configure a VSF stacking between two Aruba 2530F series switches. Let's define our network constraints; the example has following characteristics - The stack is consisting of two (2) Aruba 2350F series switches of same model and software version. In each switch two (2) 10G ethernet ports are used for stacking purposes. The stacking ports in the switches can be either cross connected or straight through connected in ring topology. In VSF, how switches are connected with each other does not matter. The switches are connected as the diagram below -  Fig 01 - Aruba VSF with 2 switches VSF allows stacking by using ...