Reasons for MLAG on Summits

[Ilya_Semenov]

Hello, everybody!

I am an engineer at partner company and we are going to make a business event for our customers. My presentation is about MLAG on BD8806 with VRRP.

I suppose that I will be asked a question about why there is MLAG on Summit Switches, which could be stacked easily?

Could you please give me some ideas?

Many thanks in advance,

Ilya

[Ilya_Semenov]

The MLAG feature allows you to combine ports on two switches to form a single logical connection to another network device.

Why couldn't I do the same with etherchannel? Make 2-summits stack and give a link from both to a required host. At host's side configure teaming or NIC bonding.

I don't understand the diffrence, please, explain.

[André_Herkenrat]

It's about downtime. When you upgrade a stack, the whole stack must be rebooted. When you upgrade a pair of MLAG-Switches you can upgrade and reboot one by one. With the right design you can achieve a always up core.

Andre

[Rui_Marques]

Besides what André already said, When you stack, the control of the stack is made only by the master control plane. The other switches are serving only the ports. On a MLAG configuration, both control planes are active and processing, so load is shared, and processing capability is added.