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Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Software Configuration Guide—Release 8.7
OL-8978-04
Chapter 23 Configuring Redundancy
Configuring Redundant Supervisor Engines on the Switch
High-Availability Configuration Guidelines
This section describes the guidelines for configuring high availability:
•
High availability does not preserve the routing table entries on the active MSFC because high
availability is not run on the Cisco IOS software. However, you can configure both MSFCs on the
active and standby supervisor engines with the same configuration to preserve the routing table
entries across the active and standby MSFCs. You can then configure HSRP on the MSFCs to
provide automatic routing backup. See the
“MSFC Redundancy” section on page 23-21
for detailed
information.
•
The timers and statistics are not synchronized from the active to the standby supervisor engine.
•
The MLS flows are preserved from the active supervisor engine to the standby supervisor engine.
•
On the 802.1X ports, only the authorized and unauthorized states are synchronized from the active
to the standby supervisor engine. The ports in any other state are initialized or restarted after
switchover occurs.
•
The 802.1X record updates are minimized by grouping similar types of updates into a single record.
The active supervisor engine sends the record to the standby supervisor engine when a variable in
the record changes.
•
The 802.1X reauthentication timers for the authorized ports restart after the switchover occurs.
•
The port security statistics are not synchronized from the active to the standby supervisor engine.
•
When you enable high availability or hot insert a standby supervisor engine on a switch that has
secure ports, all the per-port and MAC-related information is synchronized from the active to the
standby supervisor engine.
Versioning Overview
With high-availability versioning enabled, you can have two different but compatible images on the
active and standby supervisor engines. The active supervisor engine exchanges image version
information with the standby supervisor engine and determines whether the images are compatible for
enabling high availability. If the active and standby supervisor engines are not running compatible image
versions, you cannot enable high availability.
Image versioning is supported in supervisor engine software releases 5.4(1) and later. With versioning
enabled, high availability is fully supported with the active and standby supervisor engines running
different images as long as the images are compatible. The only fully compatible images are as follows:
Note
There is no software image version compatibility in the 8.x software release train. This includes major
releases such as 8.1(x) to 8.2(x) to 8.3(x) and so on. This also includes subreleases such as 8.1(1) to
8.1(2), 8.2(1) to 8.2(2) and so on.
•
Supervisor Engine 1
–
5.5(3) and 5.5(4)
–
6.1(3) and 6.1(4)
–
6.2(2) and 6.2(3)
–
6.3(2) and 6.3(3)
–
6.3(4) and 6.3(5)
–
6.3(6) and 6.3(7)
