Another layer 3 routing question but with a VRRP device install

Cantroy
Just browsing

Another layer 3 routing question but with a VRRP device install

Ok, I have read this: https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Layer_3_Switching/MS_Layer_3_Switching_and_Routing and

it seems pretty clear, in that I would need to set up another IP on the network at a remote location to act as a virtual gateway, but I am not sure how that works with VRRP.  In short, we are running a MPLS "spider" network in that all of our data flows into our central location and then back out to remote sites.  We are having our ISP supply us with both fiber and a 10 meg cellular device for backup purposes at our remote sites, and they both will be plugged into the Meraki onsite switch on different ports.  It appears to me that our devices on the current network are all set up to use the fiber router as the gateway and that all routing is configured in the router <we have no access to the router> for all VLANs, including data, VOIP, and all others.  The main question is this:  How would I configure the interfaces on the Meraki Switch so that if the fiber fails, it will fail over to the new cellular device?  

5 REPLIES 5
cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

You really need MXs for that, they support the concept of local and wide area networks.  They also cope well with failover or load balancing.  We tried two WANs with switches (Cisco 3850s that have full IP routing) and even then we never got the failover to be very good.  You need either WAN routers or in Meraki world MXs.

Cantroy
Just browsing

Well, for example, one switch at a remote site is a MS225.  As for why I was asking, it is because of 2 reasons:  1.  I was told I needed a layer 3 switch at each location, so I would assume I would need to configure it, unless the switch itself is smart enough to route traffic to another port should 1 port stop handling traffic, and I suspect that the secondary device would have the same IP as the fiber router, if my understanding of the VRRP is correct...  I haven't seen the cloud based configuration the ISP configured.  2. I know the devices were configured inproperly already.  We attempted to deploy one at a location that had a simple SG300 and the device was listed as having the IP range for a totally different location.  So, 2 issues were discussed in the phone meeting with them, and as our switches supposedly support layer 3, I thought I would get a handle on how to proceed to make sure this works in a clean manner if I could.  I'll have to look at the "MX" device, but to me "MX" means mail dns record still...

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

You need the two ISP devices to do VRRP, not the switches.

 

The MX would be a killer solution here.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Cellular/3G_-_4G_Cellular_Failover

 

You could then also migrate fully to an SD-WAN solution.

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

I don't understand how VRRP has anything to dso with what you have discussed.

 

If you don't have any other Meraki gear, then I would get the ISP to configure the fail over solution for you.

HitoshiH
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

@Cantroy HA helps device failover which is tracked by multicast of VRRP advertisement (Heartbeat).

If you use MX / MS as gateway for your clients, HA gives you gateway redundancy in the event of hardware failure or uplink connection failure (That leads no or lower priority VRRP advertisement sent down to the multicast group which triggers failover event between active and stand-by devices in HA group).

* Uplink connection failure is monitored by MX but not MS.

* Switch stack is recommended for configuring High-Availability rather than Warm spare (Active-Standby) for faster failover and better redundancy

 

As @cmr and @PhilipDAth replied to this thread, the routing failover between WAN Interfaces and Cellular can be handled simply by MX which would also simplify your network design and administration.

 

If upstream device at your network edge has connections to Internet and Cellular networks, the device would generally need to change / switch route for the traffic from downstream in case of any route failure happens.

 

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