Wired Intelligent Edge

Hi All,

I am working on planning a large scale deployment for a big Enterprise customer and planning to go with 8325 as Core and 8320 as Aggregation switches.

I would like to know on recommendation to use VSX at aggregation layer between Core & Distribution.

There are obvious benefits in using VSX but I am just wondering is VSX deployment stable and is someone using it and it is working stable in environment.

I want to check this recommendation before going ahead and proposing it. Request participant which are using VSX to give their inputs on using VSX and how successful this technology is..

Hi,

I don't know if I understand your question correctly, but using VSX between the aggregation and core switches is not recommended. Anyway  it will not be possible to create a VSX cluster using 8320 and 8325 switches.

The best option would be creating two VSXs. One with the two aggregation 8320 switches and another one with the two core 8325 switches. With that solution you can create MLAG between the aggregation and core switches if needed.

Take a look at the document " VSX Configuration Best Practices for Aruba CX 6400, 8320, 8325, 8400".

I has a lot of good information about the configuration of VSX.

https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=a00094242en_us

As someone else mentioned, you wouldn't want to create a VSX Pair between Distribution and core, you'd want it between 2 core devices and 2 aggregation devices.

That being said, we are using a pair of 8320s with VSX acting as an aggregation layer and they've been rock solid. We've done a VSX Live upgrade and you couldn't even tell that there was an upgrade taking place. Once we setup the configuration, they've done exactly what they are supposed to do without any real issues. We've been extremely pleased with them.

I don't have/haven't used the 8325s, but I imagine they would be just as reliable.

Can you please confirm which product you are using at Core Layer and since you are using VSX i guess you are using both up links from access going to VSX pair utilizing all up links.

Regards

Ajay.

Obviously no one will create VSX between aggregation & Core..

That is out of question..

I am asking about using VSX at aggregation and Core Layer and also I wanted to know if someone is running setup with VSX and it is reliable good enough to take into consideration, as I know that Cisco VPC works very well But I am not aware about Aruba VSX technology so trying to understand it..

Regards

Ajay.

I think your initial sentence: "I would like to know on recommendation to use VSX at aggregation layer between Core & Distribution." caused a little bit of confusion and the answers you've read.

You should have written: "I would like to know on recommendation to use VSX at aggregation layer and at Core/Distribution layers." ...not between them.

By the way...VSX technology, despite being young, is rock solid and mature (especially if you start with ArubaOS-CX 10.4 software branch and you follow the best practices/guidelines in your deployments)...no matter if you're going to implement it at Core, Distribution or at Access layer (at a pure Access layer it's a little bit wasted and indeed Aruba suggest to use VSF as virtualization technology either on ArubaOS-CX based Switch series - I'm referring to Aruba CX 6300 - or, eventually, on older ArubaOS-Switch based Switch series supporting VSF such as Aruba 5400R zl2 with v3 zl2 Modules or Aruba 2930F).

Thanks for comments..

To answer your other questions

We are using a Juniper QFX as our central Core, with the 8320s uplinked to that. We have 7240s connected to both 8320s (each 7240XM has 4 10G Ports, 2 go to one 8320, 2 go to the other 8320).

I really enjoy the VSX configuration. It's pretty straight forward and the documentation is good. Like I said before, they just work. The VSX Live upgrade works flawlessly in the few times I've had to use it, and we haven't had any major issues on them. The only issue I've had was getting SNMP to read correctly, but that was more user error than anything.

My personal recommendation would to be keep the 832x line in the consideration. It is really capable. We got our local Aruba team to get us some evaluation units, and actually having the units to test with and demo with really helped prove what they could do and in the end why we went the route we went.

Hope that helps

Thanks, Can you give me your contact or Email id incase I need to contact you for some help..

A side (and little OT) note: nobody noticed how the Juniper QFX5200-48Y looks so aesthetically similar to Aruba 8320 48xSFP+ + 6xQSFP+ JL479A? I'm really impressed. They are really identical - the root should be truly the same - despite the Juniper hardware can work with either 48xSFP+ + 6xQSFP+ or 48xSFP28 + 6xQSFP28 configurations (that's from 10G to 100G)!