EAPS Pros and Cons

[Michael_L__Wrig]

Greetings ....
I am ramping on XOS features and functionality in order to sandbox a Dev/Ops infrastructure migration project that relies heavily on shared network services using management VM's and VLAN's.

Would like to solicit Pros and Cons deploying EAPS as a DRP solution using BDX8800 and Summit X480 platforms to support Test-Dev labs connected to a campus/metro ring topology?.

[treese]

Oops just realized your already working on this one Paul. I'll try to be patient 🙂

Thank you,

[treese]

I'm having an issue with a shared-eaps port and having a new MLAG created. Each time when the MLAG peer is created our LACP LAG connection stops passing traffic between cores. That connection is the shared EAP port too. the the peer IP gets created we see this:
EAPS Common Path timer expired while state:Ready

That's when communications breaks. Any thoughts?

[Paul_Russo]

Hey Michael

In EAPS you can have one ring and run different EAPS domains on that ring. Think of it as one domain going clockwise and one counter clockwise. This does not require common link. EAPS can be combined in a number of different designs like a flower, one central ring with other small rings hanging off of the larger ring. In that case you will need to use common links where two switches have a link and that link has one ring going north and one going south like a snowman.

When you use Spatial Reuse the VLANs protected by the clockwise domain will go across the blocked link of the counter clockwise blocked port and vice versa.

EAPS is a Layer 2 redundancy protocol where the control traffic on the control VLAN is all L2 no need for L3 IP

If you have a ring across a campus and you want to run a VLAN running OSPF in broadcast mode that will work just fine EAPS fails over very fast and should not impact the OSPF failover.

In regards to LAGs you can use LAG ports to create your EAPS ring with no issues. Be careful using MLAG and EAPS it can be done but needs to be planned.

I hope this helps keep asking questions if you have more questions
P

[Michael_L__Wrig]

Hello Paul,

Appreciate the info.

Could you elaborate for example with 2 or three rings configured with shared ports between Primary and Secondary Masters... Regarding caveat " if you don't use spartial reuse (two rings in different directions) then you will block one link. Master secondary link ?"

- How does one configure different directions?

Regarding "L2 failover only? " Read EAPS requires L3 to function. Not clear why only L2 failover

- Does EAPS protect only MAC and Port base VLANS
- What impact does OSPF, VRRP, LAG, LB .presence have on an EAPS configured switch?

Thanks,

Michael