On 30/12/2013 23:27, Jeff Kell wrote:

terribly disruptive.  Not sure if we want to leave the HSRP in place
(thinking yes) or remove it (and the old router) after the migration,
but will cross that bridge when we get there.

If you plan on retaining it, remember you'll now be seeing HSRP packets on the wire continuously. Most times that doesn't matter, but in some cases e.g. wireless networks it can cause issues.

Generally though, we do HSRP everywhere, even in single-router cases. It's good future-proofing, and the presence of a predictable vMAC can be handy for some operational/monitoring concerns ("every VLAN FDB should have this MAC in it").



So just how "disruptive" will introducing HSRP really be?

As someone else has mentioned, IOS issues a gratuitous ARP for the new vMAC, but even if it didn't, the old interface MAC should remain unchanged and will still forward IP traffic sent to it. So introducing it should be non-disruptive, subject to a few caveats.

(Note that changing the HSRP version does not have this property; the old vMAC will be removed from the FDB, and the box won't forward traffic destined to it)

First, the default HSRP timers are 3/10 sec IIRC, so after pasting in the commands there will be a 10-second window when the gateway won't be responding to ARPs and the vMAC won't be installed. So I would put the commands in like this:

standby 0 timers msec 100 350
ip address <new>
standby 0 ip <gw>

...to get a fast transition to "Active", the either default or up the timers later (generally, very aggressive msec timers are a bit risky on IOS boxes, due to most CPUs being a bit weak).

Second, after introducing it, mosts hosts will have responded to the g-ARP, but some may not (very very rare in my experience), so you'll want to wait until they're all updated before moving the gateway, if you want them all to move together so you can remove the old router.

HTH - we've done this many hundreds of times, and if it's a comfort, it is almost always trouble-free; I can't recall having a "HSRP enabled" problem in the last few years.
_______________________________________________
cisco-nsp mailing list  [email protected]
https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/

Reply via email to