VTP Mode and Service Config for HP and IBM Cisco Blade Switches

Some time ago Scott Lowe wrote up a great article on how to set up link state tracking for Cisco switches on both IBM and HP Blades.

I have set up a number of the switches lately and I wanted to add two more commands that I consider default settings on the switch to make your life easier before deployment. You will want to check with the network admin once you are on-site and probably modify them again to meet customer requirements.

vtp mode transparent
no service config (on the HP Cisco 3020 switches)

VTP Mode Transparent will place the switches into a mode where they will not participate in the VTP Domain to pass VLAN information to other Cisco switches in your organization. This allows you to “sandbox” the switch at the customer site and make sure everything plays well before you place the switch in the VTP domain. This prevents VTP problems if your VTP number is higher than the customer’s number, which would push your VTP settings out to the rest of the organization, providing they didn’t change the default VTP domain name. Sounds crazy, but it can happen.

No Service Config on the HP Blade Cisco switches will disable the “smart” feature in the switch where it will broadcast for a TFTP service to configure itself. If you don’t want/need this feature, simply enter this command in the config and it will go away. You will know you have this feature turned on if you are getting the following error in the switch logs and console on a regular basis:

%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/network-confg (Socket error)
%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/cisconet.cfg (Socket error)
%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/3620-confg (Socket error)
%Error opening tftp://255.255.255.255/3620.cfg (Socket error)