Switching

Hello,

I am looking to implement 2 EX4200 switches for our phone system for failover but have some concerns. I have used a "chasis" type technology before on switches from another brand and it became very difficult to manage firmware updates and I had stability issues which brought down the entire stack - completly defeating the point of the redundancy.

Is a chasi best used for independant devices rather than a device with two nics for redundancy?

I.e. if I were connecting together a lot of desktops then I can see the advantage of a "single" switch. But if I'm hooking up servers with 2 nics in a failover scenario then am I better off using discrete switches? Or is this what other people do?

Thanks

Andrew.

Hi,

Virtual Chassis is for single management for your EX4200 Switches. 

On upgrading the software, all you need to do is to upgrade the master chassis (RE) and issue the command

"request system software add <file> reboot"

Check for the procedure here:

http://kb.juniper.net/InfoCenter/index?page=content&id=KB10840&smlogin=true

Is a chasi best used for independant devices rather than a device with two nics for redundancy?

I encountered different devices connecting to Virtual Chassis, not yet with redundant NIC.

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@youngnetworkguy wrote:

Hi,

 

Virtual Chassis is for single management for your EX4200 Switches. 

 

On upgrading the software, all you need to do is to upgrade the master chassis (RE) and issue the command

 

"request system software add <file> reboot"

 

Check for the procedure here:

http://kb.juniper.net/InfoCenter/index?page=content&id=KB10840&smlogin=true

 

 

Is a chasi best used for independant devices rather than a device with two nics for redundancy?

 

I encountered different devices connecting to Virtual Chassis, not yet with redundant NIC.

 

 

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Thanks. But does that upgrade switch A, reboot switch A, upgrade switch B, reboot switch B, etc. I.e. is there always a switch "up"?

No, the command shown here will upgrade the entire chassis. You want the NSSU (non stop software upgrade) procedure. 

It works very well. Uprades on chassis member at a time.

Link is here:

http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos/topics/concept/nssu-ex-series.html

Great, thank you.

VC is for RE redundancy and not necessarily switching redundancy. Bow if you were to LAGS using interfaces from both nodes then you would get redundancy for both switching and RE.