Happy holidays everyone -
I've been reading through several posts here and elsewhere about the 6224's inability to route its own management interface. Ok, enough, I get it. But what I don't get is a practical solution to what seems like a huge problem if you want to use the network to connect to the device to manage it (instead of the serial console port).
Let's say I want to have three networks A, B, and C, on the 6224 and configure it to route between any combination of them. Let's call them VLANs 1, 2, and 3. Three ethernet cables will connect to three ports on the 6224. one for network A, one for B, and one for C. Let's just ignore LAGs and redundant connections for this.
The management VLAN cannot be assigned to any of those networks, right? It says so in the documentation, and it's proven if you try to do it on the switch configuration. it doesn't let you do it.
So how do you reach the 6224 for management? Create a fourth network D, VLAN 4? That seems to be the general theme of answers to questions like this, but how do you reach this apparently isolated network? By definition it cannot be routed. Any computer that you normally use on A, B, or C, can't reach D.
So what then? A dedicated computer on D which can't reach anything but the management port of the switch? How about another completely separate router (I've got a Cisco ASA with some spare ports, or for a touch of irony, another 6224!) to provide a connection between D and one of the normally used networks? This is insane.
Obviously I'm missing something here. I can't believe that the answer is, "if you turn on routing, the management interface is basically unusable" but that's how it looks from my possibly twisted perspective. I want to have my laptop, and any other computer, sit on a network that can be routed by the 6224, and also for that same laptop be able to reach the management interface of that same 6224.
Will someone please help me understand this?
Thanks
Chris
PS: I have an email address. It's pretty much unique on across the entire planet. I use it to log into this forum. But Dell, like so many others, insists on ignoring those facts and making me create another unique identifier by playing a game of 20 questions. Hence my remarkably stupid random user name.
Thanks again, and I hope someone at least gets a good laugh out this whole thing.