"Link State Tracking" Feature on NEtgearSwitches

[yakamoneye19]

Hello everyone,

we are using two M7100-24x-Switches for our VMWare traffic. The complete networking of the vm is redundant - any network card or any of the swichtes can fail, and vmware will still word.

The problem we saw now: the m7100 switches are only connected to the ESX servers and each of them has one single uplink to the company main switch. If this cable now goes down, the VMWare failover will not work - vmware only looks if the port where it is connected to is up. And this would still be the case. 

What we found by searching the internet is a feature called "Link state tracking" on Cisco switches or "SmartLink" on HP switches. The function that we need is simple: we link the uplink port to to core switch with the VMware ports - if the uplink port goes down, the VMWare ports will get disabled.

Is there any feature like this in the m7100 or in any other NetGear switch? Or are there any plans to add a feature like this in the future?

Regards,

Tobias

[LaurentMa · Accepted solution]

Hi @yakamoneye19

Thank you for your message. We don't have such a feature like this in the M7100 series, unfortunately.

We implemented this feature in the M4300 series under the name Link Dependency Feature:  the Link Dependency feature enables or disables one or more ports based on the link state of one or more different ports.

I would advise the M4300-24X or any other 10G model in the M4300 series:

Regards,

[LaurentMa · Accepted solution]

Hi @yakamoneye19

Thank you for your message. We don't have such a feature like this in the M7100 series, unfortunately.

We implemented this feature in the M4300 series under the name Link Dependency Feature:  the Link Dependency feature enables or disables one or more ports based on the link state of one or more different ports.

I would advise the M4300-24X or any other 10G model in the M4300 series:

Regards,

[yakamoneye19]

Hello Laurent,

thank you for your response.

Just to be sure: is this feature exclusively for the 4300 series at the moment? Are there any plans to include them to other series like 7100 by update?

Thanks

Tobias

[LaurentMa]

Hi @yakamoneye19

The Community is glad to help.

No, the Link Dependency Feature shouldn't be ported to M7100 which is running an ancient branch of our software code - this will have to stay exclusive to 12.x software.

If you want to explore how to upgrade your M7100 installation with new M4300 models, you can send me a message with your contact/details using private message. I will connect you with the local NETGEAR team, based on our location. I'm sure we can find a way.

Regards,

[yakamoneye19]

Hello Laurent,

thank you for clarification.

The technical implemention would not be the problem, we need to find the money to buy...

Thanks

Tobias