Primary And Secondary Vlt Peers; Rstp And Vlt - Dell C9000 Series Networking Configuration Manual

Primary and Secondary VLT Peers

Primary and secondary VLT peers are supported to prevent issues when connectivity between peers is lost on
the switch.
You can elect or configure the Primary Peer. By default, the peer with the lowest MAC address is selected as
the Primary Peer. You can configure another peer as the Primary Peer using the VLT primary-priority
command.
If the VLTi link fails, the status of the remote VLT Primary Peer is checked using the backup link. If the remote
VLT Primary Peer is available, the Secondary Peer disables all VLT ports to prevent loops.
If all ports in the VLTi link fail or if the communication between VLTi links fails, VLT checks the backup link to
determine the cause of the failure. If the failed peer can still transmit heartbeat messages, the Secondary Peer
disables all VLT member ports and any Layer 3 interfaces attached to the VLAN associated with the VLT
domain. If heartbeat messages are not received, the Secondary Peer forwards traffic assumes the role of the
Primary Peer. If the original Primary Peer is restored, the VLT peer reassigned as the Primary Peer retains this
role and the other peer must be reassigned as a Secondary Peer. Peer role changes are reported as SNMP
traps.

RSTP and VLT

VLT provides loop-free redundant topologies and does not require RSTP.
RSTP can cause temporary port state blocking and may cause topology changes after link or node failures.
Spanning tree topology changes are distributed to the entire layer 2 network, which can cause a network-
wide flush of learned MAC and ARP addresses, requiring these addresses to be re-learned. However, enabling
RSTP can detect potential loops caused by non-system issues such as cabling errors or incorrect
configurations. To minimize possible topology changes after link or node failure, RSTP is useful for potential
loop detection. Configure RSTP using the following specifications.
The following recommendations help you avoid these issues and the associated traffic loss caused by using
RSTP when you enable VLT on both VLT peers:
• Configure any ports at the edge of the spanning tree's operating domain as edge ports, which are
directly connected to end stations or server racks. Disable RSTP on ports connected directly to Layer 3-
only routers not running STP or configure them as edge ports.
• Ensure that the primary VLT node is the root bridge and the secondary VLT peer node has the second-
best bridge ID in the network. If the primary VLT peer node fails, the secondary VLT peer node becomes
the root bridge, avoiding problems with spanning tree port state changes that occur when a VLT node
fails or recovers.
• Even with this configuration, if the node has non-VLT ports using RSTP that you did not configure as
edge ports and are connected to other Layer 2 switches, spanning tree topology changes are still
detected after VLT node recovery. To avoid this scenario, ensure that you configure any non-VLT ports
as edge ports or disable RSTP.
Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) 1172