Managing managed switches

Question

I have a number of Dell PowerConnect switches. I've successfully setup various 'trunks' and vLANs and all working sweet. But one thing annoys me. I can't seem to 'manage' my switches from my laptop as I am on a particular subnet (vLAN12 10.0.12.x) and my switches are all setup to be managed on the 10.0.1.x and its not routable. I need to go down and plug my laptop physically into each switch - which is a pain in the arse.

Any ideas or thoughts?? .... Other than I'm an idiot ;)

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 04 '11 at 03:56

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Is there a reason you don't route your management network? Between firewalling and management-access ACLs on the switches, you should be able to lock access down sufficiently.

answered Dec 04 '11 at 03:56

techieb0y

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 04 '11 at 03:58

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Three options come to mind:

Make the 10.0.1.0/24 network routed via your router.
Give your switches 10.0.1.0/24 management IPs.
Have a server or one swtich on both the 10.0.1.x network and the 10.0.12.x network and use that as a management box that you ssh or remote desktop into. Then connect to all the switches from that box. The management box could also have a some sort of serial multiplexer and be connected to each switch's port -- but that would be bit out of the norm.

answered Dec 04 '11 at 03:58

Kyle Brandt

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Cheers Guys, will do a bit of playing around with these sugegstions ;) – vlannoob Dec 04 '11 at 04:19
my current switches all use 10.0.1.x addresses. That subnet I am assuming is in VLAN1 the default vlan and therefor unroutable?!? – vlannoob Dec 04 '11 at 04:59
No VLAN is unroutable, but you will need a router set up to route between the different VLANs in your setup. – Per von Zweigbergk Dec 04 '11 at 06:42

Managing managed switches

2 Answers2