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March 13th, 2023 19:00
Trunking PC6248
Hello,
Old switches, I know.
I have four powerconnect 6248 switches. Switch 1 and 2 are stacked via stacking cards, cabled xg1-xg2, xg2-xg1, and they work fine as one 96-port unit. Both switches also have a 10gb cat8 dual port ethernet card as xg3 & xg4.
Switch 3 has a 10gb dual port card (slot 2) with xg3 to Switch 1, also on xg3.
Switch 4 has a 10gb dual port card (slot 2) with xg3 to Switch 1, on xg4.
The Switch 1 & 2 stack, and Switch 3 and Switch 4, have four vlans defined, assigned to the 100/1000 ports, and those work fine among themselves, but not through the 10gb cat8 connections. Link lights are up, status shows as connected, but no data is flowing that I can tell.
1 vlan is no longer the management lan. 20 is.
10 vlan is public/DMZ network
20 vlan is private1 network
30 vlan is private2 network
40 vlan is private3 network
The firewall/router is external, not using routing on these switches. Layer 2 only. I am hoping to have 10 public vlan appear on all four switches. Same for the other vlans.
The reason for this is switch 1 & 2 are in a rack together, switch 3 is 150' away, switch 4 is 70' the other direction. That's why I'm trying to use trunking instead of stacking them all together.
using the web-gui, I set xg3 and xg4 on the appropriate switches to be a trunk, under the vlan heading. I then went into the vlan port settings and tagged xg3 and xg4, again on the appropriate switch, for "U" for each of the defined vlans.
Nothing propogates between the switches. Since vlan 20 is the management vlan as well as the private network, and all the switches (stack, two remote) have private addresses within the vlan 20 subnet, I should be able to ping from switch to switch. Or a laptop plugged in any of the vlan 20 assigned g1-48 ports.
I can only ping the local switch. Laptop cannot see the external router unless it's plugged into the same switch as the router. I am apparently not passing any data through the 10gb slot 2 cards, switch to switch.
I read through the documentation numerous times, though trying to use the web interface rather than the cli.
Might anyone know how I should set these connections? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
DELL-Joey C
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March 14th, 2023 01:00
Hi @Frederic,
I spoke with my co-worker who is the networking support. After reading your post, he is proposing to use only XG ports for stacking. As for Switch 3 and 4, you will need to use the front 10G port for trunking. I'm not very good at networking, but do you think my co-worker's comment would work for your situation?
Frederic
3 Posts
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March 14th, 2023 06:00
The front ports are not 10G. 10G is on the back, either through slot A (stacking) or slot B (trunking). Here is a diagram of what I'm trying to achieve:
The 6248's on the left are stacked as master & slave via dell stacking cables. One management IP address, on vlan 20.
The two 6248 switches on the right are remote, connected as shown, via 10G cat8 ethernet. Management IP address for each of those is also on vlan 20.
I am trying to configure xg3 and xg4 on each of the switches to be trunks, passing all data among them all.
From the master/slave stack, I can't even ping either remote switch.
Stack: 172.16.0.2
Top right switch: 172.16.0.3
Lower right switch: 172.16.0.4
I know I cannot set xg3 and xg4 as "stacking" as upon reboot all the switches change it back to Ethernet. And so, I have to trunk them somehow, and that's what I'm struggling with.
In the web gui, if I define xg3 and xg4 as trunks, I'm still unable to ping either remote switch from the master/slave stack, and vice versa. The link lights are on, all involved ports show there is a 10gb connection as per the diagram, but no data actually flows.
Does the diagram help?
DELL-Chris H
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March 14th, 2023 08:00
Frederic,
From your diagram and description it should be possible, it is just a matter of finding where it is breaking. Would you verify if the ports aare showing up via show interface status? Also, it may be helpful if you provide the output of show tech-support as well.
Let us know.
Frederic
3 Posts
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March 14th, 2023 13:00
Thank you for your assistance. I apologize for the "lame" cell phone pictures of the web configuration tool. I was trying to make this quick.
Left side of the picture is the 2-switch stack, master/slave, the right side of the picture is the top single switch in my original diagram, just to give the reference.
Here is the stack port summary screen from the web browser configuration, which shows xg3 on the two-switch stack and xg3 on the top right switch are connected and communicating in some way. They both say "Up"
Because I want both ports (which are connected to one another) to act as a trunk, I set them that way in the vlan port settings screen:
And finally, under port configuration, this is what I have currently:
Best I can tell, the 10gb dual-port ethernet card in slot two, in both switches, is functional and communicating at least enough for the switches to recognize they're connected to something else.
No traffic flows though. I can connect to either switch via serial cable and using the CLI I can ping the switch I am serially cabled to (which makes sense) but I cannot ping the other switch. That is true whether I serially connect to the switch 1/2 stack, or the remote switch.
Thank you again for your willingness to help.
DELL-Joey C
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March 14th, 2023 20:00
Hi @Frederic,
It's probably good to let us know the output show tech-support.
I'll try to reach out to my co-worker for a simple check through.