Hi everyone,
for quite some time we've been aware of many fundamental problems with
the way support for HP SwitchStacks has been implemented in NAV.
HP SwitchStack support was implemented in NAV 3.0 at NTNU, whose HP
equipment consisted solely of HP SwitchStacks at that time. The
result is code which is heavily biased towards SwitchStacks, to the
point that NAV thinks HP devices are always SwitchStacks, no matter
what.
While we have been pondering alternative ways to model HP SwitchStacks
(and consequently, Cisco switch clusters, which are basically the same
thing), NTNU has entirely stopped using SwitchStacks. Today, they're
experiencing bad side effects of the existing HP-related code in NAV.
They're using some HP devices for routing, which NAV cannot handle at
all (because of said "HP=SwitchStack only" view). No router ports are
collected for these routers. Also, they seem to have many errors in
topology information when HP devices are involved.
Realizing that NTNU have stopped using SwitchStacks, we also do not
know of anyone else who does, so now we are considering dropping
support for SwitchStacks entirely from NAV. This way, the existing
NAV code can treat HP devices like everything else. Preliminary tests
of these changes at NTNU show promising results.
So my question to the users of NAV is: Does anyone actually use
virtually stacked HP switches? Will anyone miss support for this if
removed from NAV?
If there is no feedback on this issue, we will likely remove this
support starting from NAV 3.5.
--
mvh
Morten Brekkevold
UNINETT
