Brocade Multi-Service IronWare Switching Configuration Guide (Supporting R05.6.00) User Manual

Page 584

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Multi-Service IronWare Switching Configuration Guide

53-1003036-02

Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP)

16

Figure 158

shows a VSRP configuration.

FIGURE 158

VSRP mesh – redundant paths for Layer 2 traffic

In this example, two Brocade devices are configured as redundant paths for VRID 1. On each
Brocade device, a Virtual Router ID (VRID) is configured on a port-based VLAN. Since VSRP is
primarily a Layer 2 redundancy protocol, the VRID applies to the entire VLAN. However, you can
selectively remove individual ports from the VRID if needed.

Following Master election (described below), one of the devices becomes the Master for the VRID
and sets the state of all the VLAN’s ports to Forwarding. The other device is a Backup and sets all
the ports in its VRID VLAN to Blocking.

If a failover occurs, the Backup becomes the new Master and changes all its VRID ports to the
Forwarding state.

Other devices can use the redundant paths provided by the VSRP devices. In this example, three
devices use the redundant paths. A device that is not itself configured for VSRP but is connected to
a device that is configured for VSRP, is VSRP aware. In this example, the three devices connected to
the VSRP devices are VSRP aware. A device that is VSRP aware can failover its link to the new
Master in sub-second time, by changing the MAC address associated with the redundant path.

When you configure VSRP, make sure each of the non-VSRP devices connected to the VSRP devices
has a separate link to each of the VSRP devices.

VSRP

Master

VSRP

Backup

optional link

VSRP

Aware

VSRP

Aware

VSRP

Aware

Hello packets

F

F

F

B

B

B

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