Thank you for your response. I have not been able to find documentation that states whether dual fabric ports should be in the same or different vlans so this is very important information you have provided! I'll get this set up and tested as soon as I can.
before I can reconfigure though, I cannot get node1 back into the cluster after the last test I ran yesterday afternoon. I would like to ge tthe cluster back together so that I can make the updates. I think this information message on the cisco is relevant:
Nov 10 09:11:33.531: %CDP-4-NATIVE_VLAN_MISMATCH: Native VLAN mismatch discovered on GigabitEthernet0/5 (4094), with Switch-Core03.wmdlps.local GigabitEthernet0/19 (30).
g0/5 is connected to the SRX control port and G0/19 is connected to the fabric port. CDP is cisco discovery protocol and nothing to do with juniper - but why can the interface for the control port see the interface for the fabric port? I get this message every time I reboot either firewall. When the firewall does not come back into the cluster I keep getting this message on the switch.
At the moment show chasis cluster status on node 1
Redundancy group: 0 , Failover count: 0 node0 200 primary no no None node1 0 secondary no no CF Redundancy group: 1 , Failover count: 0 node0 200 primary no no None node1 0 secondary no no IF CS CF
and on node 0
Redundancy group: 0 , Failover count: 1 node0 200 primary no no None node1 0 lost n/a n/a n/a Redundancy group: 1 , Failover count: 1 node0 200 primary no no None node1 0 lost n/a n/a n/a
I'll keep trying, I've tried diagnosing this through kb troubleshooting articles with no luck but it seems that persistently repeating the same actions does give different results (insanity defined?) so hopefully later today I will be able to try your suggestions on the fabric ports.
Tech support pointed me to a few kb articles then simply said that initial configuration was outside their scope and closed the case. Basically, I have to get this working before they will help.
thanks Sam 