cookie_monster Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 Ages ago we had issues with XP clients and group policy when spanning tree was enabled, the ports with XP clients would randomly turn on spanning tree and the fast port forwarding didn't seem to work properly. In the end we dissabled spanning tree on all of the Planet switches. We are now replacing these switches with HP Procurve switches and i'd like to start using spanning tree, can I just enable it on our new core switches and then gradually work my way out to the edge switches? Cheers.
dalsoth Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 We just enabled it on (hp procurve) switches as and when over a week or so until it was all done due to being so busy. Should not cause any problems i would think doing it in any order really.
Sylv3r Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 We use spanning tree on our HP Procurve swicthes here. When I set it up I didn't do it in any particular order although I did start on the two core switches initially.
Netwacky87 Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 Be Warned!!! We installed a new backbone switch not a week ago, and i turned on spanning tree (HP Procurve 4808) and all seemed fine could ping everywhere until the next day, we were getting intermittent drop outs in places over the network...we would do a ping test and recieve 30 back and then loose 4 and get another 30 back and so on, Changed all of the effected areas switches, and na'da!...only till i realised id put spanning tree on the new backbone, i turned it off and no more drop outs!!...Wierd tho!!! Mart
DMcCoy Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 Be Warned!!! We installed a new backbone switch not a week ago, and i turned on spanning tree (HP Procurve 4808) and all seemed fine could ping everywhere until the next day, we were getting intermittent drop outs in places over the network...we would do a ping test and recieve 30 back and then loose 4 and get another 30 back and so on, Changed all of the effected areas switches, and na'da!...only till i realised id put spanning tree on the new backbone, i turned it off and no more drop outs!!...Wierd tho!!! Mart You need to configure the STP settings on the switches. The easiest thing to do is set the core routing switch as the one with the lowest stp value (making it the most important iirc). If you don't get this right then you can end up sending network traffic to an edge switch for processing, not an ideal situation To stop stp breaking dhcp/pxe etc just set the client ports to edge mode, or use rstp on the older procurves. If you have redundant links then you are going to need to *read* the HP manuals
cookie_monster Posted July 8, 2009 Author Posted July 8, 2009 (edited) I had started scratching through the HP manuals as part of finding out how to set lacp up, i'll take a look at the spanning tree section. I'm just a bit worried about the XP boxes not putting software on again like we had with the planet switches but it sounds like HP switches don't suffer this issue as long as you configure the ports as edge ports right? But will I need to set this on every port with an XP box on. Edited July 8, 2009 by cookie_monster
DMcCoy Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 I had started scratching through the HP manuals as part of finding out how to set lacp up, i'll take a look at the spanning tree section. I'm just a bit worried about the XP boxes not putting software on again like we had with the planet switches but it sounds like HP switches don't suffer this issue as long as you configure the ports as edge ports right? But will I need to set this on every port with an XP box on. just set it on every port that's not a switch <--> Switch connection
Geoff Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 yes, there's a separate feature on ProCurves to prevent loops between client ports. For example for the 2810, here's the Advanced Traffic Management Manual. http://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/2810-AdvTrafficMgmt-July2007-59914733.pdf Pages 5-30 and 5-31 deal with it.
bossman Posted July 8, 2009 Posted July 8, 2009 @Geoff: Would be a little like Cisco Smartports if I'm not mistaken?
cookie_monster Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 Can spanning tree be enabled but not on all switches? We are replacing some switches this year and moving the older ones towards the edge but some of the outer switches don't support it so untill they're replaced they won't have spanning tree. Will this cause issues or will it just mean that anything on those switches can be affected by a loop? Cheers.
Geoff Posted July 9, 2009 Posted July 9, 2009 it means you can't stop an arp storm on your old switches. It'll take down everything up until you hit a switch with STP enabled. 1
cookie_monster Posted July 9, 2009 Author Posted July 9, 2009 Ah that's ok then the main switch in each cab supports it so at least I can isolate it to an area for now.
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