Cisco 6500 VSS Configuration

It’s an old draft from 2010. Recently I was designing a network which VSS was on the topics, so it reminded me of the draft.

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Virtual Switching System (VSS) allows the clustering of two chassis together into a single, logical entity. This technology allows for enhancements in all areas of network design, including high availability, scalability, management, and maintenance.

The Virtual Switching System is created by converting two standalone Catalyst 6500 systems to a Virtual Switching System. The conversion is a one-time process that requires a few simple configuration steps and a system reload. Once the individual chassis reload, they are converted into the Virtual Switching System.

All control plane functions are centrally managed by the active supervisor engine of the active virtual switch chassis, including:

  • Management(Simple Network Management Protocol [SNMP], Telnet, Secure Shell [SSH] Protocol, etc.)
  • Layer 2 Protocols (bridge protocol data units [BPDUs], protocol data units [PDUs], Link Aggregation Control
    Protocol [LACP], etc.)
  • Layer 3Protocols (routing protocols, etc.)
  • Software data path

The requirements to convert the 6500 into a Virtual Switching System are:

  • The VSS requires Supervisor Engine 720 with 10-GigabitEthernet ports. You must use either two VS-S720-10G-3C or two VS-S720-10G-3CXL supervisor engine modules.
  • The VSS requires 67xx seriesswitching modules.
  • The VSLEtherChannel supports only 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

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Switching Misc. 1

To authenticate 802.1x clients:
SW1(config)# dot1x system-auth-control
SW1(config)# aaa new-model
SW1(config)# aaa authentication dot1x default group radius
SW1(config)# radius-server host 150.100.220.100 key ipexpert
  • When a PC doesn’t support EAP, it can be placed in a guest-vlan:
    dot1x guest-vlan 200
  • When the authentication is failed:
    dot1x auth-fail vlan 100

Port-security table won’t survive a reload unless using “sticky” parameter.


switchport protected: The ports cannot communicate even with other ports in the same VLAN


Assign a static switching table entry
SW1(config)# mac-address-table {dynamic | static | secure} mac-addr {vlan vlan-id} {interface int1 [int2 … int15] [protocol {ip | ipx | assigned}]

If the destination port is a trunk, you must also specify the destination VLAN number vlan-id.

Set the switching table aging time:
SW1(config)# mac-address-table aging-time seconds [vlan vlan-id]

For VLAN number vlan-id (2 to 1001), entries are aged out of the switching table after seconds (0, 10 to 1,000,000 seconds; default 300 seconds). A value of 0 disables the aging process. The VLAN number is optional. If not specified, the aging time is modified for all VLANs.

Optimize the port as a connection to a single host
SW1(config-if)# switchport host

Several options are set for the port: STP PortFast is enabled, trunk mode is disabledEtherChannel is disabled, and no dot1q trunking is allowed.

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