Cisco 6503 White Paper

Also see for 6500 - Catalyst Series 10 Gigabit EN Interface Module Expansion: Solution guide Quick reference guide Manual Description Guide

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series switches

Cisco Systems, Inc.All contents are Copyright © 1992–2002 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement.Page 1 of 19White PaperHigh Availability for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series SwitchesFigure 1The Cisco Catalyst 6500Series WS-6503,WS-C6506, WS-C6509,WS-C6509-NEBS, andWS-C6513OverviewCisco Catalyst ® 6500 Series multilayerswitches have become an essential componentof a sound network design in today’s enterpriseand service provider environments. Havingsuch a critical role, the Cisco Catalyst 6500Series must provide a reliable switchingplatform, and offer high performance andintelligent network services. The highavailability of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Serieseven has the capability to maintain an IP phonecall during supervisor engine failover. Thispaper discusses how the Cisco Catalyst 6500Series provides high system availabilitythrough hardware and software redundancyfeatures, and focuses specifically on thefollowing three areas:Fabric redundancy of the Switch FabricModule (SFM)Supervisor engine redundancy with the CiscoCatalyst Operating System (Catalyst OS), HighAvailability feature, which includes the statefulprotocol redundancy and image versioningfunctions• Multilayer Switch Feature Card (MSFC)Cisco IOS® Software redundancyfeatures—Dual Router Mode (DRM),Configuration-Synchronization(config-sync), and Single RouterMode (SRM).This paper is based on the hybrid softwaremodel for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series(Cisco Catalyst OS on the supervisor engine,Cisco IOS Software on the MSFC) and not onthe Cisco IOS Software model (native CiscoIOS Software). All feature set references willbe specifically described as a Cisco CatalystOS feature on a supervisor engine or a CiscoIOS Software feature on an MSFC. The CiscoCatalyst OS High Availability feature was firstintroduced in the Cisco Catalyst OS 5.4 releaseand is available for both Cisco CatalystSupervisor Engine 1A and Catalyst SupervisorEngine 2. Support for DRM began in CiscoIOS Software Release 12.0(7)XE1. The MSFCconfig-sync redundancy feature for DRM issupported in Cisco IOS Software Release12.1(3a)E4 for both the MSFC and MSFC2.The MSFC SRM feature was first supportedwith Cisco Catalyst OS 6.3.1 and Cisco IOSSoftware Release 12.1(8)E2 for the MSFC2.This paper is the second version of the originalthat was written in September 2000. Thisversion includes some updated sections formore precise understanding and a discussion ofSRM.Although component-level redundancy is veryimportant, a high-availability network designrelies on the proper combination of individualsystem redundancy and overall network