MLAG Network Switch For Enterprise Network Redundancy Solutions

Background

Challenge

Customer's production and office departments share the same network. If any link or device fails, both departments will face downtime and troubleshooting will take a lot of time and energy. This affects work efficiency greatly. To reduce the risk of unplanned outages and ensure the company’s normal operations, the company wanted to build redundant links.

Solution

By taking into account the need of clients and the demand for redundancy, QSFPTEK engineers have employed S7600-48X8C and S5600-24T8X switches to establish redundant links, resulting in a highly reliable network solution.

● First, to implement network redundancy, QSFPTEK engineers installed S7600-48X8C switches, which support the MLAG function (Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group). MLAG enables link aggregation across multiple devices, improving link reliability at the device level and creating a dual-active system.

● Second, use the MLAG link to build a network redundancy system, and add a Peer-link to the MLAG to exchange protocol messages and transmit some traffic to ensure the normal operation of the MLAG and greatly improve the reliability of the system. When a device in the link fails, all traffic passing through the MLAG master device is forwarded through the peer link.

● Third, the S7600-48X8C switch is configured with 48 SFP+ ports and 8 QSFP28 ports, and the S5600-24T8X switch is configured with 24 RJ45 ports and 8 SFP+ ports. The RJ45 and SFP+ ports can be directly connected to the office service end through a network cable to achieve 1G office networks, while the 10G port and 100G port can be connected to the server to realize a 10G or 100G production network.

● Moreover, the S7600-48X8C switch owns a switching capacity of 2.56Tbps and a forwarding rate of 1905Mpps. It also features 8 100G QSFP28 ports that enable data processing at 25G/40G/100G to facilitate uplinking to the core layer. Additionally, this switch is equipped with hot-swappable dual power supplies, ensuring superior device-level reliability.

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Customer Benefits

MLAG takes the benefits of LAGs and spreads them across a pair of switches that are connected by an inter-switch link (ISL). This allows network devices to form LAGs with both switches as if they are one switch. MLAG also provides redundancy by automatically rerouting traffic around failures or congestion on any link or switch.

By implementing network redundancy, the risk of a link failure causing network paralysis can be mitigated, ensuring smooth operation. QSFPTEK's extensive experience in enterprise network solutions has enabled the successful implementation of link redundancy, resulting in high-availability networks and improved resource utilization for their customers.