[CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Fajar Priyanto
Hi all,
I have plan to replace my Centos5.7 VM with newer version.
The VM works as our network gateway.

I want to ask from your experience, will it be a bad decision? My
concern is that since the Mac Address of the gateway will change, will
it disrupt the network?
How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

Thanks
Fajar.
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread John R Pierce
On 11/30/11 12:59 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

within seconds.  or faster.  and the client's ARP caches expire nearly 
as fast.

its not the switches you care about as much as the DHCP leases for your 
clients.  if you can copy the dhcp leases file over, that will save a 
lot of grief.

-- 
john r pierceN 37, W 122
santa cruz ca mid-left coast

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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Fajar Priyanto
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:09 PM, John R Pierce pie...@hogranch.com wrote:
 On 11/30/11 12:59 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

 within seconds.  or faster.  and the client's ARP caches expire nearly
 as fast.

 its not the switches you care about as much as the DHCP leases for your
 clients.  if you can copy the dhcp leases file over, that will save a
 lot of grief.


Thanks John, I feel a bit relief hearing that.
More over, the gateway is a pure one, no dhcp, no other services.
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Ljubomir Ljubojevic
Vreme: 11/30/2011 10:13 AM, Fajar Priyanto piše:
 On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:09 PM, John R Piercepie...@hogranch.com  wrote:
 On 11/30/11 12:59 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

 within seconds.  or faster.  and the client's ARP caches expire nearly
 as fast.

 its not the switches you care about as much as the DHCP leases for your
 clients.  if you can copy the dhcp leases file over, that will save a
 lot of grief.


I would suggest installing new gateway as new system, leaving old one to 
work until new one is ready. That way if something goes wrong you will 
still have old one to revert to. Just do not give in working IP's until 
you are ready to switch over.

-- 

Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

Google is the Mother, Google is the Father, and traceroute is your
trusty Spiderman...
StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Dennis Jacobfeuerborn
On 11/30/2011 10:09 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
 On 11/30/11 12:59 AM, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

 within seconds.  or faster.  and the client's ARP caches expire nearly
 as fast.

 its not the switches you care about as much as the DHCP leases for your
 clients.  if you can copy the dhcp leases file over, that will save a
 lot of grief.


If you want to plug the new system in the same port the old system was 
plugged in before then depending on the switch and how it is configured it 
can take 30-60 seconds to change the switch port to a forwarding state. 
During that time the switch will send put out STP requests to determine if 
the newly attached device is also a switch. Once these time out it will 
assume the new device is a regular system and change the port to a 
forwarding state.

You can prevent this by enabline something like PortFast for that port 
which tells the switch to simply assume that only regular devices will be 
connected to that port and to immediately change the port to a forwarding 
state.

See for example:
http://www.omnisecu.com/cisco-certified-network-associate-ccna/what-is-spanning-tree-protocol-stp-portfast.htm

Regards,
   Dennis
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Les Mikesell
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 2:59 AM, Fajar Priyanto fajar...@arinet.org wrote:
 Hi all,
 I have plan to replace my Centos5.7 VM with newer version.
 The VM works as our network gateway.

 I want to ask from your experience, will it be a bad decision? My
 concern is that since the Mac Address of the gateway will change, will
 it disrupt the network?
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

Switches normally flood all ports until a new mac is identified so
they will work as soon as the link comes up (which may take a few
seconds for spanning tree).  However, routers to adjacent subnets may
cache their arp table for up to 20 minutes.  You might have a problem
with inbound connections if you don't clear the arp table on whatever
is connected as the next hop.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
lesmikes...@gmail.com
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Lamar Owen
On Wednesday, November 30, 2011 03:59:58 AM Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 How fast the Switches can recognize the new mac? Any other pitfall?

There are a couple of things I've run into, mostly in failover situations or in 
situations where a machine was moved from one switch to another.

ARP cache timeouts are an issue for seamless failover; VMware, to use one 
example of which I am very familiar, does a gratuitous ARP *reply* when doing 
vmotion from one host to another, and this seems to make the transition very 
short.  I have had cisco routers in particular hang on to ARP caches for a very 
long time; they aren't necessarily supposed to, but I've seen them hold on well 
past the configured ARP cache expiry (meaning a bug in IOS) and then requiring 
either a reload or a manual clearing of the ARP cache to pick it back up.

I've also seen cisco Catalyst switches (mostly older ones, like Catalyst 5000 
and 5500 series with SupIII/NFFC) hang on to MLS CAM entries if the gateway is 
replaced with a flow in progress and refuse to let go for a long time.  This 
could conceivably impact any MLS-based catalyst switch, including 6500 series.

I also have some 3Com Superstack II switches that have issues with hanging on 
to CAM entries long after a machine was moved.  The longest CAM expiry I've 
seen has been about three hours, but that was quite a while back when I had an 
ATM core in my network here (3Com CoreBuilder/CellPlex 7000 core, SS II's and 
Cisco Catalyst 5500's (with the LANE card; and I typically used the 
Truckee-based OC12 LANE cards for the various LANE servers since they had the 
best BUS performance, two orders of magnitude faster than the CB7000's) on the 
edge).  It was less disruptive in those days to just reboot the core and let 
everything reacquire and let PNNI reroute the VC's for the LANE components.

So be prepared to clear ARP caches (since gratuitous ARP is sometimes seen as 
an attack vector, although it works quite well for VMware vMotion, DRS, and HA) 
and CAM/TCAM entries if things go awry.

The RPMforge/repoforge repository includes the 'garp' package; on the new 
gateway you could have this garp package installed, and then run garp with the 
IP address of the old gateway immediately after stopping the old gateway's 
interface, and that might work.  But caution is advised, and YMMV, of course.
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Fajar Priyanto
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Lamar Owen lo...@pari.edu wrote:
 So be prepared to clear ARP caches (since gratuitous ARP is sometimes seen as 
 an attack vector, although it works quite well for VMware vMotion, DRS, and 
 HA) and CAM/TCAM entries if things go awry.

 The RPMforge/repoforge repository includes the 'garp' package; on the new 
 gateway you could have this garp package installed, and then run garp with 
 the IP address of the old gateway immediately after stopping the old 
 gateway's interface, and that might work.  But caution is advised, and YMMV, 
 of course.

Thanks all for all the insights from your experience. Much appreciated.
I will do it during weekend when no users are working.
(this creates the saying about sysadmin: people work, we work. people
rest, we still work).
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Re: [CentOS] Replacing gateway, is it bad idea?

2011-11-30 Thread Lamar Owen
On Wednesday, November 30, 2011 10:32:24 AM Fajar Priyanto wrote:
 Thanks all for all the insights from your experience. Much appreciated.

You're quite welcome.  Please let us know how it went.

 I will do it during weekend when no users are working.
 (this creates the saying about sysadmin: people work, we work. people
 rest, we still work).

Indeed.  In my specific case, I schedule myself for Saturday work for this 
purpose, and schedule a day off during the week to compensate.  But I also know 
that my situation isn't representation of the general IT condition.

Hope it goes well.
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