Info/Recommend. on fiber optic

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leonemesis

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 21, 2009
Messages
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Hi guys, good day to you all.

My boss will be travelling to the US next week, and we are considering buying a new switch for our LAN, so I was thinking of getting one that would enable us to use a fiber optic connection to our main server, as we already have everything through gigabit lan (using CAT6 cabling). Honestly we don´t have any issues with the actual setup, but we are always looking for ways to improve it.

Now, I read a bit about it, and saw terms like GBIC and SFP, didn´t quite get it, never used this stuff, so if possible, can you guys give me some insight about this?

Now, just a few questions to try and narrow it down:

What´s the best way to setup this?

What will we need in terms of equipment? (Just keep in mind we only want the server to use fiber optic)

Any switch recommendations? (brands, models)

Thanks a lot for your time.
 
What is the server for? How much data/connections does it average?

Fiber infrastructure is great if its needed. Dumb if its not, so a little more information on servers/roles would be helpful
 
Gigabit over cat6 will be the same speed as gigabit over fiber; you are wasting your time.
 
k1pp3r said:
What is the server for? How much data/connections does it average?

Fiber infrastructure is great if its needed. Dumb if its not, so a little more information on servers/roles would be helpful
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I understand. Well, I can say it´s not really needed, it´s basically our domain server and database server for the software we use. Also handles large backups, but it´s not a big deal that it takes some time to do it. We currently have about 20 users, but we like the idea of having more than we need as we have room to grow as it becomes necessary.

Anyways, if you can give me an insight about it, I´d love to hear it, you can never know too much. Thanks for your time.
 
Fint said:
Gigabit over cat6 will be the same speed as gigabit over fiber; you are wasting your time.
Click to expand...

Ok, so even using fiber, it´s not possible to achieve something greater than 1 Gbps?

So, I guess the only way to improve it, would be to get a really good gigabit switch? Is there a particular model/brand you can recommend?

Thanks.
 
leonemesis said:
Ok, so even using fiber, it´s not possible to achieve something greater than 1 Gbps?

So, I guess the only way to improve it, would be to get a really good gigabit switch? Is there a particular model/brand you can recommend?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

You can do 10GB over copper as well. The infrastructure is just expensive.

The most i think you should do, is get a good Intel 4 port server NIC and load balance all the ports.

Other than that, your at the strength of your server. Fiber will not help you any
 
k1pp3r said:
You can do 10GB over copper as well. The infrastructure is just expensive.

The most i think you should do, is get a good Intel 4 port server NIC and load balance all the ports.

Other than that, your at the strength of your server. Fiber will not help you any
Click to expand...

Now, that is very interesting, I´ll look into it. For some reason, I always forget about NIC´s, should have thought of that before. Thanks a lot for your input.
 
I appreciate your input guys, I´ll just forget about it for now, as we have no need for cabling longer than 100m, so we won´t benefit of using fiber.

Now, just to finish, as we are already on the subject, can you guys recommend a switch? We´d like to spend no more than US$ 600,00. I believe that Cisco would be the best choice, but the boss may not find it easily, so is there any other brand you could recommend?
 
If you can't fork up the money for a Cisco, the Procurve switch's are not half bad

I still preferr all core switches be cisco though.
 
Foundry's are pretty nice. I have a client that is foundry from layer 3 to all of the edge switches. I'm not sure if they will fit the bill because they are priced right around cisco the last time I looked.
 
Mine Cisco switches were much cheaper, but used. 40.00 a piece wasn't too bad for 48 port 10/100 switches.
 
k1pp3r said:
Other than that, your at the strength of your server. Fiber will not help you any
Click to expand...

Heck once you get up into 10GB, as you say... There ain't no way your server is going to be putting out 10GB anyway. Fiber would be good between clusters, data centers, switches (Connecting many items together, is what I'm getting at).
 
TechieSooner said:
Heck once you get up into 10GB, as you say... There ain't no way your server is going to be putting out 10GB anyway. Fiber would be good between clusters, data centers, switches (Connecting many items together, is what I'm getting at).
Click to expand...

Last fiber i used was on a HP C500 Blade enclosure, which needed fiber to the SAN, other than that, never used it again.
 
k1pp3r said:
Last fiber i used was on a HP C500 Blade enclosure, which needed fiber to the SAN, other than that, never used it again.
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I can understand that, kindof... I think they assume you might grow it therefore actually need it.

But the devices themselves become the bottleneck when you run fiber like that. Fiber is great on the backbone (where you can actually have 10G of stuff moving) but isn't really needed between a switch and a single device.
 
TechieSooner said:
I can understand that, kindof... I think they assume you might grow it therefore actually need it.

But the devices themselves become the bottleneck when you run fiber like that. Fiber is great on the backbone (where you can actually have 10G of stuff moving) but isn't really needed between a switch and a single device.
Click to expand...

It was between 8 Blades and 1 SAN, its needed there.
 
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