Sat Jun 23 02:09:26 PDT 2001 — Redundancy work completed with no downtime. The second switch (Giga) for our fault-tolerant network design is online. We have activated redundant gigabit links from both Network Appliances to both core switches. Not only will this improve performance to the filers, but will ensure that the filers remain available even if a switch fails. A test of the failover capability worked flawlessly.
We have also moved one of our Cisco 7206 border routers to Giga. Both border routers are already injecting redundant default routes into our OSPF routing domain, which means if one border router fails, we won’t lose the Internet.
Kermit, our second Alteon AD3 load-balancing switch, is now alive and well on Giga. We will use Kermit to build out a new active-active load balancing configuration, which we will then synchronize with Piggy, our other load-balancing switch. This will ensure that web and mail remain up even if a switch fails.
Now that we’ve worked around and solved all of our problems with the Black Diamond switch (knock on wood), our redundant design will finally achieve fruition. -Scott and Kelsey