dt-lacp Distributed Trunking

Distributed Trunking -

Now everyone understands how two switches connected logically (stacked) can balance an aggregate link between them with a shared logical backplane, as cisco does, but what about HP who doesn't have stacked switches, where just a few higher end switches have the ability to do distributed trunking. A server (as it is not supported for switch to switch) can connect to two separate switches and create a single LACP trunk to both.

*note - the two switches must be directly connected, and it is a little unclear but it sounds like they have to have a dedicated link between them as the dt-trunk link, apart from the regular link. (now this does not have to be aggregated, could be a single gig connection, but as you will see in a moment it should be of equivalent bandwidth to each switch's lacp link.

Now this seems simple but what happens under the hood? With HP's usual lack of documentation it took me a while to dig up, but basically, create a non-negotiating trunk. (eg. lacp auto will not work), and connect the server. The server sends a frame to switch A which learns the mac and forwards it to the destination. Switch B also learns the mac as being on switch A. Switch B receives a frame and, having learned the mac as being on switch A, forwards the frame to switch A to send to destination.

So in essence, you are creating redundancy, but as for doubling bandwidth, ALL traffic will proceed through a single switch so both the inter-switch link and EACH switch's core uplink must be able to support the full server lacp bandwidth, for all it's links.

Eg. Server has 2gigs to switch A and 2gigs to switch B. Switch A needs at minimum 2gigs to switch B. Switch A and Switch B both need at minimum 4 gigs up to the uplink/core. (assuming you want the server to have 4gigs of bandwidth to the core) This is of course on top of any other traffic the switches will be forwarding from other devices.

Of course spanning tree is going to have to block a link somewhere anyway, so all traffic forwarding through a single switch may be the expected outcome anyway.

Cheers!

Oh ya, the config:

ProCurve Switch 1(config)# switch-interconnect a1
ProCurve Switch 2(config)# switch-interconnect a1
 ProCurve Switch 2(config)# trunk b20-b21 trk99 dt-lacp
ProCurve Switch 1(config)# trunk c10-c11 trk99 dt-lacp

 and of course if you needed an aggregate link between switches, replace a1 with trk5 and add whatever ports you needed to trk5 just like a regular trunk port.

  show lacp distributed is your show command to see the lacp status of BOTH switches