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May 10th, 2012 05:00

Power Connect 5548 LAG LCAP Settings

Hi Please forgive me but im quite new to managed switches but eager to learn and to configure my network in an optimal way.

Basically we currently have A watchguard Firebox (firewall) with VLAN rules plugged into one of  5 Nortel Switches in a stack and have aquired 2 New Dell 5548's setup with HDMI in a stack which I want to connect to the nortel stack in a redundant manner, after some reasearch it seems that creating a LAG using LACP is the way to proceed here. The Nortel stack, Consists of 1x 4548GT-PWR and 4x 4550T-PWR.

Now Ive done a lot of searching and Ive configured the dell switches ready for the connection but i want to make sure I have everything on the dell side setup correctly before i plug into the Nortel switches which I should have some help doing from our phone system support.

So in order to Help clarify what it is that I need. The network we currently run has around 8 VLANS some listed below:

VLAN 1, C-LAN, Computer LAN for the Client Machines
VLAN 50, S-LAN, Servers etc
VLAN 120, T-LAN, Telephone Lan, Nortel VOIP System*
VLAN 60, V-LAN, Phone servers and recording etc*


*we wont have any VOIP phones on these switches as the switches are not POE but may have some phone system componants in the future, However I will try to keep all phone system traffic on the Nortel Switches as they will have all the relevant settings for that.
Note no ISCSI Traffic (we will have seperate switches for this and dell are setting these up)

I need the new Dell switches to connect to the Nortel Switches in a redundant manner so my idea is to have 4 links from the dell switches to the nortel switches using a LAG (no point using the SPF ports as the nortel ones are gigabit speed), on the dell side the ports will be gi1/0/1, gi1/0/2, gi2/0/1, gi2/0/2. Once the LAG is setup I need to be able to configure the Dell switches other ports to specific VLANS so the majority of the ports on the switchs will be used for C-LAN (VLAN1) Access, some of the ports with be S-LAN (VLAN 50) access which will mostly be used for hyper-V hosts (hosting domain controllers and so on)

Hopefully that all makes sense and you can see the reasoning behind it all.

So on the dell switches Using the GUI Web interface (im not so confident with CLI's), I have setup the VLANS, C-LAN Example:

and Have set up the LAG as follows: LAG1

Lag1 Members:

Example port perameters for a port in the LAG

ports 1 and 2 on both switches unavailable to assign to a VLAN as i would expect

This is the main settings screen that im unsure about, I have setup the LAG as a Trunk which from searching I think is correct, but the VLAN List and Native VLAN setting, Im not sure what I should be putting Currently All VLANS are listed in VLAN List followed by (I) except for VLAN1

Finally here is an example port setting for port gi1/0/3 a port not in the trunk, I want this port to be default VLAN 50 to pick up DHCP for this LAN and be able to communicate across the trunk. what im unsure of is do I need this port to be tagged and should all ports be tagged on both switches. how would the switches handle untagged traffic?

Ive done a lot of googling, and I think I know how its supposed to work, and Ive read the manuel for these switches which helps a little but it doesnt explain some of the questions above and I want to make sure its right before i plug anything in and take the network down lol. Should I be enabling Storm control Just incase? or should theis not be neccasary.

Until im sure the link is working i wont be plugging any devices in other than my management workstation to access the GUI, however I would like to be able to test everythign is working and not causing any extra chatter on the network, is there a way to test fo this, or should i just test each port in the lag on its own to see if the lag and communication to the nortel switches stay up, for instance pinging a sever from my managment workstation?

sorry for all the questions. I hope someone can help

Thanks

5 Practitioner

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274.2K Posts

May 10th, 2012 09:00

Tagging is a way of adding information to a packet that shows where that VLAN came from and should end up. So for instance a Trunk between two devices needs to have packets from each VLAN tagged, so that when it gets to the other device, the other network device is aware of which VLAN that packet belongs to and can route it accordingly.

Trunk mode and General mode are going to be used between VLAN aware devices. In most situations a client plugged into a switch is a VLAN unaware device. So it gets plugged into a port in access mode.

Access port strictly accepts untagged packets (no vlan info) from the device connected and adds a vlan tag to the incoming packet to be processed in the switch/router.

If the Trunk already adds all the VLANs to it, that is great, traffic should traverse then. In the futurre if there are any VLANs you do not want to traverse, then simply go in and remove them from the list.

If a Trunk connection between two devices receives any untagged packets, it will pass that information across the Trunk via the native VLAN, in an effort to resolve where it needs to go.

Thanks

5 Practitioner

 • 

274.2K Posts

May 10th, 2012 06:00

It looks like you have done a good job of doing research and getting things setup. I will try to answer some of the questions you have .

Your distributed LAG in Trunk mode looks good.  Just make sure to click on each VLAN that will traversing the Trunk and then click add. If a VLAN is not added to the Trunk it will not communicate across the Trunk. This is done in the VLAN list section, not the Native, multicast, customer VLAN section.

Any port you will have a client plugged into should be in access mode for the VLAN you want it to access. So any server you want to access VLAN 50, should plug into a port that is in access mode for VLAN 50. Unless that port is plugging into a virtual switch on a virtual machine host, then general or trunk would be the option to use.

While this article is not on the 55xx switch, it does go into detail about broadcast traffic and its control. I would think you would be fine leaving storm control off, and only turning it on if it is needed.

www.dell.com/.../app_note_5.pdf

Without having a full test environment to try this on, you won’t know for sure until you go to implement the new hardware if it is going to have any hiccups. Dell does have phone support for immediate assistance. So once you start working on this, if you run into issues I suggest calling them to help work through any speed bumps.

1-800-945-3355

Let us know how the deployment goes, or if you have any other questions.

Thanks.

9 Posts

May 10th, 2012 09:00

ok that all makes sense and makes things a lot clearer and i feel like i may actually get this working lol.

The only point is when I setup the LAG as a trunk I can no longer set Tagged, Untagged etc, but im going to assume that this is because its setup as a trunk all that is configured automatically.

great thanks for your help

9 Posts

May 10th, 2012 09:00

ok I have set my ports in access mode as you have suggested and this greyes out the tagged / untagged options so im assuming these are not neccasary? I have to admit to not knowing what these are?

Putting the LAG into trunk mode added all the VLANS 1 through 4000+ into the trunk I believe so this should be set up correctly. however the native VLAN was set to VLAN1 by default but i selected None, does this seem correct? could you tell me what the Native VLAN option does?

If your happy with the rest of the settings as you seem to be, i should be talking to my nortel engineer tomorrow and I may test the functionality. Fingers crossed

Thanks for your fast response to my question!

5 Practitioner

 • 

274.2K Posts

May 10th, 2012 12:00

Correct, so if you have a server plugged into a port that is set to access mode for VLAN 50, the packets the server sends to the switch are untagged, but once the switch receives them the switch knows that the packets belong to VLAN 50 because of the port being in access mode for VLAN 50. So it places a VLAN 50 tag on it. And then if that packet needs to travel across the Trunk to the other network devices, the Trunk keeps that tag so the other network devices knows what VLAN it came from.

Now say you plug a laptop into a port that is not assigned any VLAN, any packets it sends to the switch will be untagged, and go onto the Native VLAN, in this case VLAN 1. Then if the switch cannot resolve the request it will send the packet across the Trunk on the Native VLAN as an untagged packet, in an attempt to resolve.

Hope this wording makes sense.

Thanks.

9 Posts

May 11th, 2012 07:00

Yes thats really informative thanks a lot for your responces! After a quick conversation with my nortel phone support engineer this morning, I was able to get the LACP working to my nortel stack without any further configuration changes on the dell stack so we were right on with the settings. Have been able to remove and plug in some of the ports and keep connections up reliably so really pleased!

Thanks again for all your help.

5 Practitioner

 • 

274.2K Posts

May 11th, 2012 08:00

Steve, that is great to hear! Thanks for keeping us up to date.

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