You can still accomplish the same objective, its just not called a multi-level vif anymore. Now its a failover group, and its much better. You make the two interface groups (per node), each with lacp to its own upstream switch for link aggregation, then you add those interface groups into the same broadcast domain. The ports within a broadcast domain form a system managed failover group. If a switch goes down, the lifs fail over to a surviving interface group. You have the option of configuring lifs to auto-revert when the interface group comes back.
The end result is still link aggregation with switch failover, but now you can run active traffic on all the ifgrps, and lifs can fail over to any surviving interface group (or port) in the cluster that is part of the same broadcast domain.
But how can you take advantage of that when you only have 2 ports per node at your disposal?
One option is to simply forgoe link aggregation, and place the individual ports into the broadcast domain. All ports are active, and If a switch goes down lifs fail over to surviving ports on the other switch.
Another option is to build an LACP group on each node, each going to different switches. If a switch goes down the lifs fail over to the surviving interface group on the other node. This is a very risky design, because if you lose a switch and the wrong node goes down for a reboot there is nowhere for the traffic to go and you will have an outage. I only point this one out to discourage someone else from coming up with the idea.
A third option is to use single mode interface groups. If a switch goes down, the interface group fails over to the other switch. This is less disruptive to the lif but doesn't improve throughput to the lif compared to opton 1.
Protocols and use cases are part of the equation as well. An ISCSI environment would favor option 1 since SAN lifs don't fail over anyway. On the other hand a heavy CIFS environment would favor using interface groups.
I usually settle on option 1 in this scenario.
If you really want link aggregation with switch failover you could add 1gb cards to the controllers if you have available slots. Barring that, stack the switches.
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