DIY Router or Switch Management port

Say you've become very fond of that dedicated management port on your Cisco Nexus switch. Now how to connect your Catalyst 6500 into that out-of-band management network?

Local policy to the rescue!  This works like a champ and is not to be confused with Policy-based Routing. (Although PBR does have a great ring to it!).

A local policy is triggered by packets involving the device itself.  Not traffic being routed through.  Here's a sample:


ip local policy route-map local-mgmt
!
ip access-list extended mgmt
 permit icmp host 10.2.3.4 10.161.161.0 0.0.0.255
!
route-map local-mgmt permit 10
 match ip address mgmt
 set ip next-hop 10.2.161.1
!
end

Where 10.2.3.4 is a loopback or other management-related interface on your switch and 10.2.161.1 is the next hop router that gets you to your management networks.  Of course you could just alternately make your OOB management a single, large, flat subnet.  Connected routes for the win!


For more information, Petr Lapukhov has several other examples, his fourth coinciding with mine above.