EXOS MLAG and bonded S8s

[Jake_Koch]

Hello Extreme Hub,

I have a questions regarding EXOS MLAG and bonded S8s

1st here is the scenario:

I have a customer with bonded S8s that function essentially as a collapsed core (Distribution/Core and some direct server connections)
S8-Alpha is building 'A' and S8-Bravo is in 'Building B'
There is a Data Center in Building A and a Data Center in Building B, each Data Center server is single homed to its buildings S8. Also each buildings IDFs are also single homed to its local buildings S8.

The customer is going to be increasing their fiber infrastructure between building A and building B with the goal of dual homing the Data Center servers and some of the IDFs.
The customer also plans to add some EXOS x690s to move the Data Center servers off of the S8s. So all of the servers would connect to local MLAG'd x690s, and the x690s would then uplink to each S8 (local and remote) using the new fiber infrastructure.

My question is, are there any issues connected MLAG'd x690s to bonded S8's with regards to STP or any other loop prevention protocols? (XLRP)
Am i correct in saying, that from the perspective of the x690s, the ports facing the servers need to be set up as MLAG and the ports facing the bonded S8s need to be set up as MLAG ? (otherwise, the ISC between the x690s would not block looped traffic from the S8s ?)

Should each x690s connect to more than one blade per S8 chassis ?

The x690s would be set up as L2, VRRP and routing would still be handled by the S8s.

I am not familiar with S8 bonding and I am newer to EXOS... I just want to make sure I am not creating a problem with this design.

Thanks

Jake

[Andre_Brits_Kan]

Hi Jake When you talk about bonded s8, is alpha and bravo bonded together or is aplha and bravo each a bonded s8 setup?

[Largetrousers]

There are some Extreme papers I’ve seen in the past which advise against STP being used from the mlag’d uplinks, my take on it is you’d otherwise need to implement stp over the mlag isc which will cause a lot of problems.

One solution - if the vlans on the mlag’d x690s are unique to those on the bonded s8s, could this connection between the environments become L3 using OSPF as that would negate the need for a L2 loop provention protocol? Also if these are servers it gives good segregation from the user facing vlans.