Load Balanced Network.

Bonznumber1
Conversationalist

Load Balanced Network.

hey all, 

 

I'm sure the solution to this is simple but i just cant find it.

 

we have 3 ms250's and a mx84 on our network.

 

Currently all 3 switches connect back to the MX on a single cable.  But we are experiencing ALLOT of bottle necks with all out internal traffic traveling over the network on a single 1g line.

 

My plan is to have our 24port MS250 act as our Core and server switch and the 2 48port switches be just for end users.

 

What I'd like to do is run 2 lines from the MX to the core and 4 lines from the core to SW1 and SW2 (2 lines each) that way no more than half our network traffic to the servers will be going through 1 switch at twice the speed.

 

Here's the Problem.  I have done extensive networking with HP Switches and this is a 2 min task per switch. But I cant for the life of me figure out what needs to be done to make this work properly with Meraki.

 

 

Please help 😞

7 REPLIES 7
BrandonS
Kind of a big deal

This is not possible because the MX appliances don't to any type of LAG or LACP to bond ports.  I am curious how 1G could be a bottleneck though. A MX84 can't do 1G on the WAN side.  I feel like you have some other issue and this is not the solution you are looking for.

- Ex community all-star (⌐⊙_⊙)

1g is a huge bottleneck.  on our internal network.  the way it is set up now all traffic from sw1 and sw2 goto the MX then from the MX to the core to interact with files on our file server. that single 1g line from the MX to the core is handling the traffic from about 80 users at any given time.  we are a law office so it ends up being a TON of data.

Bruce
Kind of a big deal

@Bonznumber1 , do you have multiple VLANs, and if so where are your Layer 3 interfaces at the moment? If you have multiple VLANs and your Layer 3 interfaces are on the MX then that will be your bottle neck. Your idea of establishing the 24-port switch as a Core is the right approach, but also move Layer 3 interfaces onto it so inter-VLAN traffic never has to hit the MX, that should improve performance.

Bonznumber1
Conversationalist

@Bruce I'm really glad you asked this!

 

I just "inherited" this network so it was not built by me.  and as it turns out I hadn't looked at our routing much yet mostly because of the crap fest that is the server and network rooms.

 

We have 3 v-lans, Production (1), Voice(101) and a VPLS(666) for site to site.

 

And nothing configured for layer 3 routing what so ever!  so the MX is doing it.

 

So I'm going to be spending some time trying to set that up on the MS without knocking out the entire network.

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction for the bottle neck!!!  I cant believe i hadn't even looked!

cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@Bonznumber1 from your VLAN list I'd guess that everything that needs performance is on VLAN 1.

 

If so then I'd deal with the layer 2 first.  As you have 3x MS250 switches then you can either connect them together using the front mounted SFP+ ports and get 10Gb/s with a cheap DAC cable.  Better still, you could use the rear mounted QSFP+ ports to stick the switches, you'd need three cables in total, but would get an 80Gb/s backplane and can leave your MX cables where they are.

 

This would mean that any traffic within a VLAN would be very fast no matter which switch the devices were plugged into.

 

If you do need to route traffic between VLANs more quickly then as a phase 2 I'd move the routing to the MS stack.

Bonznumber1
Conversationalist

that's not a bad plan.  I think we'll be going the SPF+ way mostly just because SW1 and 2 are about 15 Feet away from what will be the core.  the stacking cable for that is not cheap 😄 but the 10G will defiantly help thanks a bunch.

 

i'll report back when done

 

cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

Indeed @Bonznumber1 anything over 3m can get expensive for those...  As you'll be connecting via the front ports then if possible just connect them round in a loop and spanning tree will close one connection but give you a redundant link.  If you need more than 10GB/s then you can pair connections up using aggregation.

 

With regard to the MX connections, spanning tree should do the same, but I'd remove one cable so it is only connected to two of the three switches.

 

What switch firmware are you running?  I'd make sure it is 14.32 to ensure you avoid MS to MX spanning tree issues...

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