Today @ 10:40 am we experienced a processor switchover on both of our core switches.

Both of these switches have redundant processor engines where the standby processor checks the primary processor every 5 to 10 milliseconds. If the standby processor can not communicate with the primary it will take over causing it to become the active processor.

Today this happened on our secondary core switch and then approximately 30 seconds later on our primary core switch. It appears that this was a precautionary measure taken by the on board diagnostics on the switches as both devices are functioning normally at this time.

Since these switches also act as our border routers this had the effect of disconnecting the BGP sessions on both devices. There was less than a minute of downtime while the BGP sessions re-established themselves.

Kyle Murray
Network Manager
digital.forest