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What happens to the devices attached to the Cat 6500 when a CSM fails?

April 26, 2017attached cat CSM Devices fails happens

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What happens to the devices attached to the Cat 6500 when a CSM fails?

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A. If you’re considering the case of an active CSM without a standby peer (either in the same box or in a different 6500), then you lose connectivity to the devices connected to CSM VLANs which are not configured at L3 on the MSFC, unless you got other L3/2 paths to reach them. In most configurations, where the MSFC is used on the client side of the CSM, if the CSM (not backed-up by a standby CSM) goes down, then you lose connectivity to the real servers from the client side. Since the CSM is the only device moving packets between its client and server VLANs the switch cannot simply failove to basic L2/L3 functionality. If that device physically goes down, then you don’t have anything to move packets among those VLANs (unless you configure PBR, the MSFC should not be configured to route among those VLANs, since this would break the network, having packets being routed around the CSM).