Administrator Guide

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.
VLT Bandwidth Monitoring
When bandwidth usage of the VLTi (ICL) exceeds 80%, a syslog error message (shown in the following message) and an SNMP
trap are generated.
%STKUNIT0-M:CP %VLTMGR-6-VLT-LAG-ICL: Overall Bandwidth utilization of VLT-ICL-LAG (port-
channel 25)
crosses threshold. Bandwidth usage (80 )
When the bandwidth usage drops below the 80% threshold, the system generates another syslog message (shown in the
following message) and an SNMP trap.
%STKUNIT0-M:CP %VLTMGR-6-VLT-LAG-ICL: Overall Bandwidth utilization of VLT-ICL-LAG (port-
channel 25)
reaches below threshold. Bandwidth usage (74 )VLT show remote port channel status
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Virtual Link Trunking (VLT)