Home lab/infrastructure planning. Router on a stick?

EDIT> I probably went about asking these questions in the wonkiest way possible. Looking again at it today, most of this doesn't make sense. I havn't whiteboarded it yet

somewhat disregard for now, I'll edit this later today with more coherence.



I am in the process of revamping my home infrastructure. I sold off all my old enterprise-type hot, loud servers, and have a virtual host(using Xen for now at least) and storage box (Open Solaris).

Its time to get serious about my home network infrastructure.
I am planning to add at least one more virtual host in the not-too-distant future.

So far, the plan is an HP 1800/1810 switch and Cisco 2811 router.

With a separate storage vlan and management vlan


Which leads to the question: Am I planning for failure by using a router-on-a-stick, with virtual guests living on networked storage?

This will be my first attempt at a real virtual infrastructure at home, at work we use layer 3 core switches, so It has never even come up.

Secondary question: I have only ever used Cisco for managed gear, and havn't really got a firm grasp on HP capabilities yet. So I am guessing that VTP is not a choice, and all vlan work will need to be done on both router and switch?


I guess the end question it: for home setup (non-HA, etc) am I on the right path? L2 Managed switch -> router on stick | -> Firewall -> Ethernet handoff from provider.

vs L3 Managed switch -> Firewall -> Ethernet handoff


And (inexperienced with router on a stick setup) even a 2811, I would need an additional GE card, it has 2 FE ports, and I am planning on at least 3 vlans. Is there a workaround for this, or is there a much more elegant solution for my needs that I am not even thinking of?



Will probably edit this post into oblivion if I start thinking about it more.

SiegeTheDay said:

So far, the plan is an HP 1800/1810 switch and Cisco 2811 router.

With a separate storage vlan and management vlan




Secondary question: I have only ever used Cisco for managed gear, and havn't really got a firm grasp on HP capabilities yet. So I am guessing that VTP is not a choice, and all vlan work will need to be done on both router and switch?

Click to expand...

yes, both need to support vlan's

VTP is proprietary to Cisco, but MVRP is the equivalent standard protocol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Registration_Protocol

you are going to get slow file transfers if you are going to access the storage VLAN using intervlan routing.

If you are using a storage server in both VLANs then that shoudl be fine.

Just put everything in the same VLAN...

A 2811 is pretty robust, you don't need that and a firewall for home. Just use the 2811 as your edge device and turn on the zone-based firewall feature (assuming you have the right IOS on it, otherwise you'll have to google-ninja one).

"Router on a stick" is pretty lame for anything outside a lab for experimentation and you'll only get about 60M bits per second with a 2811 on a good day with a tail-wind.