Switch Redundancy – Switch Redundancy with Dell N2000 Series Switches

This is the logical view of what you're trying to achieve:

Configure the router priorities for both VRRP 'a' and VRRP 'b' as follows:

• Router 1: 110 (master)
• Router 2: 100 (backup)

The configure interface tracking as follows:

• Router 1 VRRP a: track interface R1b with a track priority of 90
• Router 1 VRRP b: track interface R1a with a track priority of 90
• Router 2 VRRP a: track interface R2b with a track priority of 90
• Router 2 VRRP b: track interface R2a with a track priority of 90

If interface R1b goes down, Router 1 will change its VRRP 'a' priority to 90. This priority is now less than the VRRP 'a' priority that Router 2 has, so it will preempt and take over mastership for VRRP 'a'.

In addition, because interface R1b has gone down, then the VRRP hello packets will fail across VLAN 'b'. This will be detected by Router 2 (after failing to receive a hello packet within the dead timer interval), at which point it will take over mastership for VRRP 'b'.

If interface R1a goes down, then in a similar fashion, Router 2 will take over mastership for both VRRP groups (Router 1 VRRP 'b' priority = 90, and the VRRP hello packets will fail across VLAN 'a').

If either interface R2a or R2b goes down, then Router 1 will continue to be master for both VRRP groups.

Note that the priority value I've chosen above are quite arbitrary -- you may want to choose different values. Also, if the VIP address of a particular VRRP group is the same as the interface address for one of the routers in that VRRP group, then that router will automatically take a priority of 255 (i.e. it will always be the master unless that interface goes down).

As a side note, to get the above logical architecture, you will need a physical architecture similar to the following:

You can read up on VRRP on Wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Router_Redundancy_Protocol

Brocade's VRRP documentation is here:

http://www.brocade.com/support/Product_Manuals/ServerIron_SwitchRouterGuide/VRRP.7.2.html

Brocade also have some VRRP configuration examples here:

http://www.brocade.com/support/Product_Manuals/ServerIron_SwitchRouterGuide/VRRP.7.11.html

Hope this helps! :)

One option is to connect both switches together and create two vlans that span across both switches. Connect the routers and the WAN side of the FW to VLAN 1. Connect the LAN side and the servers to VLAN 2. If you run HSRP on the routers, that is your default gatewway for the firewall. Here is a logical diagram. Let me know if you need help configuring trunking on the switches.