Switch Benchmark Automated

Considering buying a new switch. Typically not all to big an issue. Check Datasheet and fine. For smaller use cases this is probably feasible but I experienced never the less reaching some limits. So what to do?

Right now I started to do a benchmark and wanted to test out in which configuration a network switch actually maxes out. Besides max- MAC entries, max routing entries or multicast groups particular the number of differen VLANs results in memory consumption, since each one needs dedicated buffering.

On top most VLANs need IP configurations set up and depending on your applications probably multiple of them. Unfortunately in my case exactly the later.

Now you may consider configuring max configurations some fun, but after several loops to find the setup maximum, this does not exactly look like productive work. To create multiple configurations which then might be Continue reading

How To Configure Multiple VLANs on one Synology Bond

Some times you may need perhaps more than one network at home connected to your Synology NAS. You are a geek and want to do strange VMWare things or you simply want your kids friends not to find the private family pictures.

Accessrights are one thing, hard network separation probably something entirely different. Even if you don’t want to separate traffic but want to support storage in different subnets probably you don’t want your homeuse- router do handle storage traffic. At least it is very smart to avoid that.

Conceptional this may be solved by interface overloading on the network interface of the storage device. You may have different network cards, to separatre traffic, but why would Continue reading

How To Configure IRF on HPE FF5700

Approaching a certain quality level of switching and routing, high availability evolves to be an obligation. In these terms, according to the different OSI service layers, there are many high availability protocols, securing the according network services. The Spanning Tree family as STP, RSTP, MSTP, PVST, protocols for link aggregation as LACP and layer three routing redundancy services like VRRP.

These protocols have the advantage, being vendor independent standards and presume to be interoperable. But either design gets complex, interoperability keeps its caveats or ressources are simply disabled and take over in failiure. Thats not exactly performance driving.

So vendors created stacks – which failed otherwise, or they started to create systems of higher complexity which proprietary created load sharing high availability clusters in the Continue reading

EtherConnect Caveats

Am Wochenende eine EtherConnect des Rosa Riesen in Betrieb genommen. Über das Drama bis die Leitung tatsächlich zwischen A und B liegt will ich gar nicht klagen, aber …

Vollmundig vom Vertrieb die Einfachheit angepriesen: “Einstecken … geht, aber sie haben doch einen Router?”. Als hätte den irgendwer nicht. “Sonst könnte ich ihnen noch einen Verkaufen!”.

Der Techniker vor Ort sagt auch eher gar nichts und lässt einen mit einer silbrigweißen Kiste alleine. Also steckt man mal ein Kabel in den mit LAN beschrifteten Port und prompt antwortet einem ein: …
Continue reading

Configure VRRP on hp networking E5400-Family

Configuring redundant gateway services for hp ProCurve ProVision based switches is not a very big miracle. Basically its about switching it on. VRRP, saying virtual router redundancy protocol is similar to HSRP from  CISCO or CARP from Open BSD. VRRP itself as of today is standardized in RFC5798 by the IETF and follows hp’s habit of using industry standard protocols.

Why is it not redundant routing ? Well since the VRRP feature is enabled on an per VLAN basis and even more, it only defines a redundant IP interface within the according VLAN. The actual routing is covered independently from this. Assuming that the routing is configured properly the failing over IP interface ensures that the routing can happen. Itself provides only a redundant IP interface, which could be used as routing gateway, so we name the function redundant gateway services.

Different to other approaches by other vendors, VRRP only provides pairwise redundancy where the virtual IP interface is the same than the according VLAN IP on the owning routing switch. This address is failed over to the backup switch, who has a second IP interface configured in the VLAN. This is necessary to check the proper operation of the primary interface.

The partnering happens based on a so called virtual router ID, VRID which is defined within the VRRP configuration. This enables administrators to configure even different redundant IP gateways within one VLAN, if static routing requirements have this need.

So configuration on the Master works as follows. First configure the proper VLAN IP address. Naming VLANs is a clever approach and helps in the long run.

vlan 10
name "production east"
ip address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0

Then the VRRP feature is globally enabled:

router vrrp

Then the actual redundant IP interface is configured within the according VLAN context:

vlan 10
vrrp vrid 1
owner
virtual-ip-address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0
enable

Be aware that the VRID context is independently activated on a per VLAN basis and enabled within each VRID definition.

On the backup routing switch the VLAN IP configuration as wel as the VRRP activation look pretty much the same.


vlan 10
name "production east"
ip address 192.168.0.2 255.255.255.0

router vrrp

Within the VLAN based VRRP configuration here the backup role is defined:

vlan 10
vrrp vrid 1
backup
virtual-ip-address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0
enable

Voila, redundant gateway interfaces should be available.

Especially the strict creation of pairs is different to other implementations. Often sets of interfaces may be created. As well the assignment of the virtual IP as the identical IP that the VLAN IP on the owning router is not necessarily something other vendors do the same way. Very often the virtual IP is one and the local VLAN IPs are two different dedicated ones.