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Forum Discussion
Help M7100 MLAG is driving me mad
Morning everyone .. i am looking to get some form of help from the community about a frustrating sets of problems we are having with MLAG and 4 M7100s switches .I would hopefully receive back a runni...
Hi fr4nk18,
Welcome to the community! :)
I inquired your concern to the higher tier of NETGEAR Support. As per the higher tier of NETGEAR Support, the configuration you have posted is correct. Let me share the article below:
MLAG on M7100--Basic setup and best practice
Please note what is says about Redundancy from the article above: “When connecting equipment to MLAG switches, this connection should be done redundantly. Ideally, non-redundant equipment is connected through a redundantly-connected edge or core switch.”
what we would like to achieve is having a connection between hosts connected in the 10G switch stack with hosts connected in 1G switch (in the same private B class) with or without routing ....
On SW1 and SW2, you can only connect devices by using LAGs. Therefore, a PC with a single NIC card that is connected to either SW1 or SW2, will not be able to communicate with Lab Switch.
Kindly answer the questiions below:
a. On SW1 and SW2 connectivity needs to be achieved by the use of LAGs. Therefore, if you connect a host without configuring a LAG, the host will not be able to connect to Lab Switch. Are LAGs used for every device connected to SW1 or SW2?
b. The expected behavior is that on SW3 and SW4, no LAGs are needed to be configured on the connected devices in order for them to be able to have full connectivity with the Lab Switch. Can you confirm that this is the actual behavior?
Regards,
DaneA
NETGEAR Community Team
Thank you, DaneA
Let me add the following:
On SW1 and SW2, you can only connect devices by using LAGs. Therefore, a PC with a single NIC card that is connected to either SW1 or SW2, will not be able to communicate with Lab Switch if the single NIC PC isn't connecting to an MLAG. This is a limitation and we know this is "consuming" one port on the other switch that will never be used. But this is the only solution. Please create one MLAG across SW1 and SW2, and connect the "orphan" PC to SW1 this way. Please create another MLAG to connect another "orphan "PC" to SW2.
Etc.
This is not elegant, that's why we enhanced our Stacking technology in more recent generation switches (M4300 series) for allowing spine and leaf stacking between 1G and 10G models, distributed LAG across the stack with Non-Stop Forwarding (LACP), etc.
I hope this will help.
Regards,
Hi Laurent and thanks for the info
However i am aware and accepted from the begginning the limitations and were planning to connect the hosts to any of sw1-2-3-4 switches always with the connection (sw1 and 2 or sw3 and 4)
the goal was to communicate with an (single or double carded) host connected to the lab switch .Wtih the given configs I tried all the matrix (single and bonded connection on both sides)
with no success except connectiong from the sw1-2 mlag to the labswitch ip
In the meantime i opened a support case with the support and received a configuration from your lab
I have to test it yet and hope to do it before the end ./ beginning of the next week and will share the results
thanks for now
Francesco
Hi DaneA
Sorry for my delayed answer i was off for a few days (to recover after the fight with the Netgear switches
)Coming to your questions and notes ...
I read the articles so many times i can repeat it while on waterboarding
) however it did not help .The best should be to have a complete running config .I requested support and i received it .. actually i did not have the time to test it but will do and share the resultsa: I configured a server with two netowrk cards in a bonding configuration with a leg in sw1 and a leg on sw2 ... The result was not as planned (communicating with the lab switch)
b: i tried as well to connect a single network card host on sw3 with the same depressing results as above
As per your understanding an host connected to the lab switch could be single carded isn't it ?
The same for sw3 and sw4 while on sw1-2 the connection has to be made on each side in bonding ( wondering if the bonding type can make a difference)
Then what happened was a complete debacle except some success pinging the lab switch from a correctly connected double carded host on sw1-2 but was not possible to ping an host connected to the lab switch in single connection ...
this is what i have to share right now .. hopefully this week beginning of the next i would try the configuration Netgear support gave me
thanks for support and feel free to ask
Francesco
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