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MLAG vs Stack what am i missing

MLAG vs Stack what am i missing

Chris_Chance
New Contributor

‎03-06-2015 12:08 AM

Can't seem to wrap my head around the reason for using MLAG vs Stacking, I'm planning to use 2 x670's as a 10gigabit aggregation hub for our remote sites, but i want redundancy, so the idea was run 1 fiber to each of the x670's and run mlag so if 1 x670 fails, tada still up and working... But then i got to thinking if i stack those 2 x670's and use a standard lag group from 1:1 and 2:1 to the remote site, isn't it IDENTICAL, but i get the benefit of not dealing with the mlag, not having to deal with managing 2 core switches, and still keep the same load balancing, same redundancy, same resilience and high availability? I feel like theirs got to be something here I'm missing
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23 REPLIES 23

Chris_Chance
New Contributor

‎03-06-2015 02:50 AM

got to agree a pro-con or comparison between the 2 would be great, beyond just the sw upgrade fact
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Stephane_Grosj1
Extreme Employee

‎03-06-2015 02:39 AM

Hi,

MLAG is as transparent as Stacking for any other device for L2/VRRP. To it, this is just a LAG.
MLAG offers a natural local switching compared to Stacking, ie the ISC should be used for unicast traffic only for failover of links (if dual-homing only), while Stacking may use more intensively the stacking links.
MLAG offers also more resiliency, each node has its own Control Plane.
But 2 nodes to manage, and when it comes to L3/MPLS, this is really like 2 routers.
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Mrxlazuardin
New Contributor III

‎03-06-2015 12:44 AM

I'm interested with this and will have the likely question since my user ask me about it too. The cause is, the full capacity stacking needs additional parts to buy. Any pros vs cons and comparison between stacking and MLAG? What about the compatibility with other brand products and end points (ex. servers)?
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Paul_Russo
Extreme Employee

‎03-06-2015 12:19 AM

Hey Chris From a function perspective your are right the failover of the links is the same. The reason why MLAG is better is that it allows you to do software upgrades of the core. If it is a stack then you have to down the whole stack taking down both links. MLAG has more management as you mention but if redundancy is what you need it is a better design. I hope that helps. P
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GTM-P2G8KFN