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I have two L3 capable ProCurve switches (2810-24G) which I would like to use in our Cisco environment. The Cisco switcheshave vtp configured, and all VLANs are added/maintained basically on the distribution switch.

Is it possible to distribute what VLANs the switches should carry in between each others (cisco trunk ports vs untagged everything in HP) using VTP, or is this a big no no and I should consider using only one type?

My goal is to incorporate the ProCurve gigabit switches, and run a couple of ESXi servers on them, hence the need to be able to acces

3molo
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3 Answers3

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You will need to manually number and name the necessary vlans on the HP switch, as it will not learn them from VTP. But, generally you only need to define the few vlans you actually plan to use on the HP, not the full set carried by the Ciscos.

A multi-vlan port (called a trunk port in Cisco, but trunk means something else to HP) can have at most one untagged vlan; packets for all others must be tagged. On Cisco, the trunk's "native" vlan is always untagged, and everything else is tagged. On HP, you can set these as you wish, though there can again be at most one untagged vlan per port.

You must match the HP tagging to the Cisco's, which typically means the default vlan 1 untagged, and the other vlans tagged.

Also on the Cisco side, you should specify which vlans to send to the HP, as by default Cisco switches will send all of them, and count on VTP pruning to eliminate the extras. List whatever vlans you manually added to the HP switch on the parent Cisco trunk port with "switchport trunk allowed vlan " followed by a comma-separated list of the desired vlan numbers.

Plus, if you have Cisco switches "downstream" of your HP (e.g. Cisco core -> HP switch -> Cisco child switch) then you should disable vtp pruning on the Cisco side of link from the core to the HP. Otherwise the child Cisco switch may cause the core to prune out any VLANS that are used in the HP but not in the child Cisco.

HP has some extensive notes about making this work, through the search at HP.com makes them hard to find. Google for things like "procurve and vtp".

Steve Bohrer
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  • In HP terms, a trunk is the combining of 2 or more ports for link aggregation such as 802.3ad. Cisco calls this EtherChannel. – jftuga Mar 16 '11 at 13:53
  • When referring to 802.1q vlan tagging, Cisco uses the word "trunk" while HP uses "tagged" & "untagged". – jftuga Mar 16 '11 at 14:00
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That's a big no no (basically since only Cisco implements VTP). Mixing switches (even for L2) is also kinda no go if you don't want finger pointing from Cisco or HP's side in case of problems.

pfo
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As pfo state VTP is Cisco proprietry however MVRP (used to be called GVRP) is a multi-vendor standard that's functionaly almost identical to VTP - Certainly Cat 65xx servers can use MVRP, don't know about Procurve's but I know the 2810-24G supports GVRP so presumably MVRP support is either inherent or a code update away.

Hope this helps.

Chopper3
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