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Enterprise-level switch recommendations?

P

Phaethar

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 13, 2002
Messages
92
Hey all,

I'm starting to look for some larger switches and was hoping someone with a bit of experience could provide some advice on what to look for, and possibly some specific models. What I'm looking for is:

-Managed, stackable, 48-port 10/100/1000 switch. All ports need to be gigabit ready, and the switches must be rack mountable. I need 2 of these.

- I also need a 12-port rack mountable gigabit switch as well. The more bandwidth available on this, the better, as it will be connecting multiple rack enclosures, each with 7-10 servers. Each rack has an existing switch with 2 gigabit modules installed, 1 of which will be used to uplink to the 12-port switch, which in turn will be connected to the rest of the network.

What kind of things should I consider on these? I'm finding that there are not a lot of 48-port gigabit switches on the market right now. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right place. This is a first for me, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
What's your budget? This is the best place to start, because if not you will get recomendations for switches ranging in price from $1,000 to $10,000+
 
Well, that's the fun part... I haven't been given a budget yet. So, I've been trying to look at all price ranges. Given that this will be the backbone for pretty much everything going forward, I'm looking for anything that that will work at this point. Sorry I can't be more specific.. I'm just looking at all options right now though.
 
I checked around a few of the usual websites.....

Dell, Asante, etc..........no 48 port managed gigabit models...

Only ones I can think of that would have a good core gigabit switch that meets your specs would be......

Cisco - 6500 hundred series
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/index.html

Extreme Networks - Black Diamond series
http://www.extremenetworks.com/homepage.asp

HP - their new updated Procurve line
http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/index.htm

Foundry
http://www.foundrynet.com/


Hope that helps...........be sure to post pics of whatever you guys decide to purchase!!

There is a big thread in the networking forum to post pics of your uber network setups......:D
 
Your looked at most likely at a cisco 6509/6513 or maybe even a 4506 depending on how much exandability you want. They have 24 port gigabit blades you can put in them for that requirement although your going to pay for whatever company you go with.
 
Alternatively, depending on your requirements, I might recommend to you going with 4 of the Dell 5224 24 port gig switches to satisfy your need for the 2 48 ports, and one of the Dell 5212 gig switches for your 12 port need.

I use both of the models, and while they dont have all the features of the Cisco switches, they're cheaper - and they're damn good solid switches for the money.


As far as Cisco goes, here's the breakdown on list pricing for you for the different models you might look at:
(L2) 2970 24 port 10/100/1000 - $5,000
(L3) 3750 24 port 10/100/1000 - $6000-$11,000 depending on features

I dont even want to start trying to price out a 45xx or a 65xx for you. Those are very modular switches, and I dont have any experience with them. I have a feeling you might be looking at 10k very easily though, but I could be wrong.
 
I have a feeling you might be looking at 10k very easily though, but I could be wrong.
Click to expand...

Yea thier 10k+ easily just for the chassis...i saw a used one with 6 48 port 10/100 modules for 22K on ebay. Probably looked at 30K for what he wants with the gigabit.
 
Wow, thanks for all the tips so far. Let me try to answer most of them..

Those are very modular switches, and I dont have any experience with them. I have a feeling you might be looking at 10k very easily though
Click to expand...

I looked (briefly) at the modular chassis from Cisco and some others, but discounted them pretty quickly. As you say, they're going to be a bit too expensive, and probably overkill for what I need.

Alternatively, depending on your requirements, I might recommend to you going with 4 of the Dell 5224 24 port gig switches to satisfy your need for the 2 48 ports, and one of the Dell 5212 gig switches for your 12 port need.
Click to expand...

I had looked at the Dell site and at those exact switches, but didn't see anything about them being stackable. I'm seriously looking into the HP Procurve switches, as they can be stacked and managed with via 1 IP address. I could stack 2 of the 48-port switches (2848), and have an 8-port in there as well (which they now tell me will be enough ports for what they're planning for the future :rolleyes: ). So, I'm leaning more towards that at the moment, although I'm still looking around. The Dell switches would be right around the same price though.. might have to look into those again too.

Thanks for all the help so far with this.
 
go to Nwfusion.com and read the recent review of the procurve 2848. I like the HP procurves but they seem to have missed the curve on the new 2800 series. Performance wise, under load, it drops packets. (as early at 60% load). A comparable dell did much better.

Now, i dont know what your design is, but having only 1 gig uplink for a 48 gig switch sounds like you will be oversubscribed.

Also, you haven't mentioned what featureset you are looking for. Do you run vlan's?

The cisco 2970 and 3750 are very nice switches (have both in my enterprise), but are kind of expensive.

Like boscoh stated, i've heard very nice things about Dell switches. And from a price perspective, i think they are hard to beat.
 
Hey Darthkin,

Yeah, I read that review just recently too, and I agree.. kinda sounds like they have some issues.

As for network design, this is more for future growth than anything else I believe, although I'm being told what to get, not really the plans behind it. We do not run any VLAN's at this time, but who knows what will happen in the future. Also, I believe most every workstation (which is what we need the 48 or 24 port switches for) is running at 100 Mbps. Again, this will be changing, slowly, as needed. The switch that everyone is connected through only supports 100 Mbps now, and that switch only has 1 connection to the current racks, and we haven't had any problems yet. So, upping the entire network to gigabit should give us lots of room to expand. I don't forsee the users saturating that anytime soon.

However, I don't know about the other switches being stacked and the bandwidth they might be using. Initially, this will only have about 3 or 4 racks on the 12 port switch, which will need to be stacked with others (24 or 48 ports.. whichever we get). There shouldn't be that much data going from the users to the servers, but if there ever was, any recommendations on the best way to avoid saturating the link between the 12-port and the other switches? Or just in general, is there an easy to implement solution to avoid overloading a single connection between switches?

Thanks again for the info... I'm getting close here.
 
I can vouch for the Cisco 6509's. We have 2 here and they just refuse to break a sweat no matter what we do to them.
 
I dont know how well the Dell 52xx switches handle VLANs. I've never set them up with those. I can tell you though, it might be a pain in the ass. Dell's GUI and CLI for those switches SUCKS hardcore. I hate it, possibly more than I've ever hated another management interface. The Dell 52xx series are by far the kind of switches you want to have to access maybe only a couple times a year. If you make changes constantly and you're accessing them all the time, you're gonna learn to hate the interface. I would not use them as end-user switches in a dynamic environment where users are moving around a lot.

I'm going to assume you guys have a competent engineer that is laying out the future plans for your network.

I'd really have to see your bandwidth usage patterns and your future plans before I could tell you whether or not upgrading to gig across the board is a waste.

You very well might see a better cost/performance ratio by upgrading your end user switches to accomodate 48 100Base connections to the users, and a couple gig uplinks to an aggregation switch, and give gig to the servers. In that case, I'd probably recommed you get two 24 port 100Base switches with two gig uplinks and aggregate the uplinks together into your aggregation switch, this will give you a 2 gig uplink.

I honestly dont see the average desktop user needing a gig link anytime in the next 5 years. Even the most demanding user I have on my network might peak his 100mb connection for 5 or 6 seconds out of the whole day. The rest of them have yet to break the 30% mark. I dont know what kind of business you are. If your employees do word processing, spreadsheets, and database type stuff, you probably wont ever use Gig anytime soon. If they push big sound files and video/animation files all day long, or are constantly moving around HUGE database files you'll most definitely see an improvment by upping to Gig.

To give you an idea of the cost comparison:
Dell 3324 - 24 10/100, 2 10/100/1000, stackable, - $500 appx
Dell 3348 - 48 10/100, 2 10/100/1000, stackable - $1000 appx

I've never used these switches, but I hear they are awesome.
I'd aggregate those into something like a Dell 5212. Then all you have to do is provide gig to the servers.

If you want Cisco gear, you can check out the 2950T-24's. 24 10/100, 2 gig uplinks. They're kickass switches, we use em all over our network. You can manage all of em from one IP address. They're about twice as much as the Dell's though. Expect to spend around $1000 a piece for em. Same thing here though, aggregate them into a 5212 or 24.
 
Phaetar,

Usually, in a normal enterprise design, you have two links running from each closet to either distribution or core switch. This is for redundancy and also for link aggregation.

But if for whatever reason you are limited to 1 link and are unable to expand, then you are forced to start prioritizing data on that link. You can start by prioritizing which application are the most critical and work your way down from there.

I would also agree with boscoh that unless you have a specific need for gig, that it might make sense to go 10/100 for now (and pocket the savings for something else).

Also the reason you don't see too many 48 gig stackable switches is because no matter what, the 2/4 uplink ports would become fully saturated. Now i've seen stackables with 10gig uplinks that would fulfill this purpose, but enterprise that require so many gig ports usually use chassis based switches. (plus they are very expesnive..) Case in point. The cost of 3 3750-48TS was the same as a 4506 with a sup4, 6 fiber uplinks, and similar number of 10/100 ports.

One thing that i would make sure is that on your core switch (12 gig ports), make sure that it is non-blocking. That means that it should have enough backplane bandwidth to handle traffic if all ports are utilized at 100%.

Boscoh, when you mentioned the bad interface of Dell's, it reminded me of the worst i've ever encountered. Alcatel switches. No CLI on their stackables. all slow menu driven setups.
 
if you got the cash... nortel > *

http://www.nortelnetworks.com/products/02/bstk/switches/baystack_5510/index.html

mmm yummy

The BayStack 5510-48T Switch features 48 10/100/1000BASE-T RJ-45 ports for desktop switching and two built-in SFP (Small Form factor Pluggable) GBIC ports for uplink. Port 47 and Port 48 offer configuration flexibility by allowing the network administrator to configure each port as either 10/100/1000 or make use of the built-in GBIC. As many as eight BayStack 5510-48T Switches can be stacked to achieve up to 384 10/100/1000 ports for high-density desktop switching.

schweet! :eek:
 
Originally posted by Wiseguy2001
wow 48 1 gig ports in 1 unit! and it is quite cheap $7000, i'll take four lol
Click to expand...

for someone named wiseguy, that wasnt very funny :p ;)

and actually 48 10/100/1000 ports in a 1U switch with insane backplane/stacking abilities along with semi L3 and QOS for $7k is quite inexpensive...

but then again, if you need such a switch you have that kind of money anyway :p
 
I'll try harder next time. It is a very nice switch, it does make you wonder how the likes of Cisco can charge such huge prices with compatition like this + its more advanced than anything cisco has out (like for like).
 
Originally posted by Wiseguy2001
I'll try harder next time. It is a very nice switch, it does make you wonder how the likes of Cisco can charge such huge prices with compatition like this + its more advanced than anything cisco has out (like for like).
Click to expand...

Doesn't surprise me much. Gotta remember, Cisco switches have 70% of the market (according to a teacher I have).
 
hrmm, perhaps 70% of all routers... but with all the other companies... 3com, bay (nortel) networks, smc, linksys, dell, allied telesyn, alcatel, ibm, extreme networks, accton, netgear, intel, lucent, hp, and those are just the ones i can remember off the top of my head atm... and i seriously doubt they all share that 30%
 
Originally posted by FLECOM
hrmm, perhaps 70% of all routers... but with all the other companies... 3com, bay (nortel) networks, smc, linksys, dell, allied telesyn, alcatel, ibm, extreme networks, accton, netgear, intel, lucent, hp, and those are just the ones i can remember off the top of my head atm... and i seriously doubt they all share that 30%
Click to expand...

Heh, he said with routers, it was 80%.

With the companies you mentioned, it'd make more sense to me if the percentage was really 30%, and all the other companies share 70%. I didn't say that what my teacher said was the truth, but he deals with cisco more than I do so his word is more credible than mine. :)
 
It depends on what market segment he was referring to as well. Saying Cisco holds a 70% share of the enterprise market is a lot more realistic than saying Cisco holds a 70% share of the SMB market.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say that 70% mark probably isnt too far off for the enterprise, and they probably have 30% of the SMB market.
 
I remember seeing a slide showing who had the most number of total ports shipped (10/100 and 10/100/1000) for 2002 and 2003

I think cisco led in one... and foundry led in another...

But... though the price is nice for the baystack.

I'd pick cisco tac over nortel tac any day.
 
Originally posted by Darthkim
I remember seeing a slide showing who had the most number of total ports shipped (10/100 and 10/100/1000) for 2002 and 2003

I think cisco led in one... and foundry led in another...

But... though the price is nice for the baystack.

I'd pick cisco tac over nortel tac any day.
Click to expand...

I hate Nortel's support.
 
Thought I'd throw this out there.. looks like the Nortel 5510 switch can be had for a lot less than $7k. A quick search showed that it's dropped a lot in price since that review.. search results here

Also, getting back to the original questions, I'm leaning more now towards going with 48-port 10/100 switches for the users, with gigabit links to the servers. Much cheaper and easier to find, and the need for gigabit speeds just isn't there yet, as others have pointed out. So, I just have a couple (hopefully basic) questions left.

1) I'm trying to develop a picture of the link aggregation design here. If I went with 2 48-port switches, each with 2 gigabit ports, I'm assuming that I'd use 1 port for stacking, and 1 port on each of them to connect to a central switch. That should get me a 2 Gbps link, correct?

2) Assuming the above works, I'd need a seperate switch for the servers (12-port) to give them all gigabit speeds to communicate with each other. But, could I (in theory) use more than 1 port on that switch to connect to the aggregation switch to get more than a 1 Gbps link?

I'm trying to make the most efficient use of bandwith here, without overloading any 1 link. However, if you can't tell, I've never had to worry about this many different systems before.

Thanks for all the advice.
 
Phaethar,

The question to ask yourself is why do you need to stack the switches?

If there is not alot of data traded between two computers, then there is no point to stack them.

You don't get an added benefit of having 2 separate Gig uplinks, because yout bottleneck is the 1 gig pipe between the two switches.

If you are stacking them to create redundant links, then your design is more complex because now you have a spanning-tree loop. So to accomodate the loop, only one of your gig links would be active at any time. (the other would be blocking). (if what i just said makes no sense.... find an expert, find an expert!!!)

There is a way around it but it depends on if you hardware supports it. On my cisco cat 3750's, i can have a stack of 5 and trunk uplink gig ports across multiple switches. THat means i can use switch 1 port 25 and switch 2 port 25 and trunk them together to look like one link on the other side. Don't know if nortel can do that.

I think in your scenario, it would be best to have each 48 10/100 switch connect directly to your core switch(no stacking between switches). Also I would probably buy a larger core switch (24 gig ports maybe) to accomodate both growth in your data center and closets.

Hope this helps. Keep asking questions!!
 
The question to ask yourself is why do you need to stack the switches?

If there is not alot of data traded between two computers, then there is no point to stack them.
Click to expand...

There isn't really much data traded between the individual workstations, but there is quite a bit traded between the workstations and the servers. Applications loaded (and run), etc. So, it doesn't sound like they necessarily need to be stacked. However, from what I'm told, the datacenter will not be growing much at all over what we have already, so a 12-port core switch should be plenty big for a very long time.

So, does this same explanation apply to connecting the server switch to the core switch as well? I would guess now that most switches can't just make use of having multiple connections to double the bandwidth. I don't think it would be a problem, but if there was an easy way to increase the bandwitch between the server's switch and the core switch, I'm all for it.

Thanks again for all the great help! I'm sure I can keep coming up with plenty of questions... :cool:

Edit: On the topic of aggregation, in a scenario like this, is there much advantage to going with a core switch? It's tough without knowing about bandwidth usage and stuff I'm sure, but really, how much of an improvement would I see over just connecting each of the 48-ports directly into the server switch? If we installed a 12-port gigabit switch for the servers, and connected each 48-port into it as well (as it will be a long time before we have 12 rack enclosures), am I looking for trouble? :confused:
 
get yourself two dell powerconnect 3348's for the users and a dell powerconnect 5212 for your core...

unless you need a lot of L3/QoS stuff i think this setup would work well for you...

you still havent really given us a price to stay within, so i am assuming the cheaper the better :p
 
Yeah, the cheaper the better is always good, but I haven't really been given a budget or a spending limit. Guess it's up to the boss to decide.. I'm just coming up with some options.

get yourself two dell powerconnect 3348's for the users and a dell powerconnect 5212 for your core...
Click to expand...

I'm very seriously looking at those Dell switches, as well as the 12 port for the servers.. but is there a need for a core switch as well? I'm being told that the number of workstations probably won't be going up much at all, but we will be adding more servers and rack enclosures. I'm just wondering if there is a need for a separate core switch in between the 48-ports and the server switch. Initially, we will be using only 4 ports on the server switch (4 racks), and I thought about using 2 of the ports for the 48-port switches. Good idea, or bad.. and why?
 
Here's what I would do given your situation:

I'd go with 24 port 10/100 switches. You'll have less users per switch, and it you aggregate your two gig uplinks, you'll have almost a full 100mbps for every user assuming every user is going to be using 100mbps at the same time. If you have a 48 port and you aggregate 2 gig links, you've got a big bottleneck there. The 24 port switches gives you more wiggle room should you see your bandwidth requirements go up. I'd get Dell switches if you're on a budget, but you can check out the Cisco 2950's too.

Are you wanting to be able to configure the switches via a single IP, and thats why you're concerned about stacking? If so, you dont necessarily need to have them stacked to be able to configure them with 1 IP. With my Cisco 2950's, as long as they can communicate with each other and recieve CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) and HSRP packets from each other they can be in the same "cluster" and be configured from a single IP. None of my switches are linked together, they all connect into an aggregation switch. I can't speak for the 3xxx series Dell switches, never used em. But the 52xx switches dont have a management utility to manage the switches from a single address. If they do, it's not included free with the switches.

At one of my sites, the aggregation switch they all connect into happens to be the server farm switch as well. So the servers are all plugged into the same switch that the user switches link into, which I think answers another one of your questions.

I'd go with either the following:
Cisco 2950T-24's as the user switches, Dell 5212/24 as the core switch (where your servers are plugged into as well)
or
Dell 3xxx series switches and Dell 5212/24 as the core switch.

You just need to get your budget lined out and shop out the features you need.

Dont rely on Dell reps to tell you what their switches can do. They'll blow smoke up your ass all day long. I've heard their PowerConnect support group is good, but dont believe a thing the salesmen tell you about their switches.

Google for reviews on them instead. If you have questions about the Cisco 2950's, fire em away. We use quite a few of them, and their smaller 8-port 2940 cousin.
 
Hey Boscoh,

Thanks for all of the great suggestions, I really appreciate them.

I'd go with 24 port 10/100 switches. You'll have less users per switch, and it you aggregate your two gig uplinks, you'll have almost a full 100mbps for every user assuming every user is going to be using 100mbps at the same time.
Click to expand...

I like this suggestion, but after what Darthkim was saying about multiple links creating a spanning tree and only being able to use 1 link at a time, I'm a bit confused about how this would work. Is there a trick in getting something like this set up to use both gig uplinks into the same switch, or is it something that is a feature of the switch itself?

For the stacking, it's not that vital, it was more of a convenience thing than anything else. I guess I was just thinking "well, they're all in the same rack, so they should be stacked". After reading these suggestions and thinking about it, it's not required, as it sounds like I can get more efficient use of the bandwidth by not stacking.

Other than that, like you said, we're still shopping around for the right switches. I like the way the Dell switches sound, and I'm looking for some reviews on them. If I can swing Cisco, that would be even better. I'm just trying to come up with a nice layout. Once I figure out how I can do the link aggregation, I should be almost set.

Thanks again!
 
Phaethar,

Let me clarify something here.

If you have 1 switch connecting to another switch using two ports, as long as you "trunk" them together (bond them together so it looks like 1 link) you should be good. There is some configuration involved, but its easy.

In a sense it will look like this

Edge Switch :::::::::::: Core Switch


What i was talking about (spanning tree loops) is in a configuration where it looks like this

Edge Switch A -----------
I \
I Core Switch
I /
Edge Switch B------------


See how switch A and B are connected? This looks like a loop, eh? because you have two paths of going to the core switch. You want to make sure not to create a loop like this. Like i said in my previous post, there are ways around it, but it depends if your switches (dell) can support it.

If you have a configuration like this

Edge Switch A -----------
\
Core Switch
/
Edge Switch B------------

or even like this

Edge Switch A ::::::::::
\\
Core Switch
//
Edge Switch B:::::::::::

its fine.



*** for some reason my diagrams aren't coming out right (it removes the spaces). The first diagram you have switch A connected to switch B and the core switch. ***
 
Just to kind of elaborate on what Darthkim said, as long as you trunk (Dell calls it 'Link Aggregation' and Cisco calls it 'Etherchannel') the links together, you're fine.

Whether you have Switch 1 and Switch 2 linked together then have one gig link on each one going to the core switch, or if you have two gig links going to the core switch but they arent trunked into one link, you've still got a loop. If you aggregate the two links into one (this is done in the OS of the switch) then the switches view the two links (or however many) as one, so theres no spanning tree problem.

Leave spanning tree enabled though, and make sure you set it up correctly with the switch closest to your servers as the root bridge. It's a good CYA in case you mess up or someone else plugs something in that they're not supposed to. As long as you dont have any loops though, STP wont block anything.
 
No, its not. Trunk is used in many, many, many different ways...including in reference to VLAN's.
 
Hm.. I guess trunking is often referred to inter-vlan "trunking" (dot1q and isl).

I guess the most vendor agnostig term would be "link aggregation" (lacp) as that is a ieee standard (as opposed to port channeling or etherchanneling).
 
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