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Difficulty: MediumHigh Availability and Redundancy Concepts

A network engineer is designing a high-availability network topology for a cluster of mission-critical application servers. The design requires active-active link aggregation, increased total bandwidth, and seamless link failover across two separate physical access switches without Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) placing any redundant interface into a blocking state. Which TWO of the following configurations or technologies must be implemented to fulfill these requirements?

  1. Configure Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG) or Virtual Port Channel technology across the two access switches.Answer
  2. Enable IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) in active mode on the server NIC team.Answer
  3. C
    Assign the physical interface IP addresses of the two switches directly to host network cards as primary and backup default gateways.
  4. D
    Set the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) bridge priority value to 65535 on both access switches to bypass root bridge election.
  5. E
    Connect the server LACP trunk directly to two unstacked standalone switches without inter-switch peer control links.

Answer

To achieve active-active link aggregation and redundant switch connectivity without STP blocking links, Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG) must be configured on the switches alongside IEEE 802.3ad LACP on the server NIC team.
Implementing Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG) across the access switch pair allows them to function as a single logical switch toward the servers. Combining this with IEEE 802.3ad LACP on the server NIC team enables active-active link aggregation, increased total throughput, and transparent link failover without Spanning Tree Protocol blocking redundant paths.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the requirement for active-active link bundling spanning two physical switches.
Identified that standard LACP requires member links to terminate on a single logical device entity.
Unstacked standalone switches cannot coordinate control plane frames for a single standard LACP trunk.
2
Identify the switch technology that presents two physical switches as one logical switch.
Selected Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG).
MC-LAG synchronizes control states between peer switches so downstream servers perceive them as a single LACP peer.
3
Identify the standard host protocol for dynamic link bundling.
Selected IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) in active mode.
LACP manages frame distribution and link status monitoring dynamically across all active interfaces in the group.

Key Concept

Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG) and Dynamic LACP Integration
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Topics

High Availability and Redundancy Concepts

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