VSI Master and Slave Redundancy
The capability can be used by the controllers for cooperative or exclusive redundancy as follows:
•
Cooperative redundancy
Both controllers can be active in a partition, and can control the resources simultaneously.
•
Exclusive redundancy
Only one controller is active at a time. It is up to the controllers to resolve which should be active.
The switch software has no knowledge of the state of the controllers. The state of the controllers is
determined by the VSI entities. From the point of view of the BCC, there is no difference between
cooperative redundant controllers and exclusive redundant controllers.
For illustrations of a VSI Master and Slave, see Figure 23-3. For an illustration of a switch with
redundant controllers that support master redundancy, see Figure 23-8.
Switch software supports master redundancy in the following methods:
It allows you to add multiple controllers to control the same partition.
•
•
It sets up the control master-slave VCs between each of the controller ports and the slaves in the
node.
•
It provides controller information to the slaves. The slave advertises this information to the
controllers in the partition. The controllers can then use this information to set up an inter-master
channel.
The intercontroller communication channel is set up by the controllers. This could be an out-of-band
channel, or the controllers can use the controllers interface information advertised by the VSI slaves to
set up an intermaster channel through the switch.
Figure 23-8 shows a switch with redundant controllers and the connectivity required to support master
redundancy.
Figure 23-8 Switch with Redundant Controllers to Support Master Redundancy
The controller application and Master VSI reside in an external VSI controller (MPLS or PNNI), such
as the Cisco 6400 or the MPLS controller in a 7200 or 7500 series router. The VSI slaves are resident in
BXM cards on the BPX node.
Cisco BPX 8600 Series Installation and Configuration
23-20
Chapter 23
Configuring BXM Virtual Switch Interface
Master-slave link
Inter-master link
Controller
Controller
Release 9.3.30, Part Number 78-12907-01 Rev. E0, May 2005