Im with Edison, this is the million dollar question! we have 6509 switches, they are about 9 years old and has never crashed, I mean the chassis.

I have had sup crashes but standby takes over.

On the other hand I have seen brand new 6509 out of the box and chassis has developed problems, possibly damaged during shipping.

Put asside what type of Network Devices brand your company is using, whether is Cisco or others. What it comes down to is "return on investment", and how much your company will be willing to take losess in terms of $$$ should the company's CORE network failed.

As a network administrator/engineer you should always provide and present to management the design guidelines and the risks for not investing in more fault tolerant architecture DUAL CORE, chanses that a chassis will fail is slim if properly grounded but you never know.

HTH

Jorge

thanks to everyone, to complicate things, its a collapsed backbone, so all the servers connect here. It also has the fwsm, idsm and nam. So, I need rack space, all the modules, I assume, more power and the servers need to be dual homed, too. Its going to be a big project. But, the bottom line is the business, so I if my management is willing, I should go ahead.

But, the bottom line is the business, so I if my management is willing, I should go ahead.

Very key statement. Present it to the management and let them decide. If something happens, it was not because you didn't bring it up.

__

Edison.