andrew,

i try to answer all your q's.

1. just read up on the differences of the 3 @ http://www.mcmcse.com/cisco/guides/hierarchical_model.shtml

based on that im between core and access.

2. not sure what collapsed or full mesh is. trying to find info.

3. all ip? see after steps for more info.

4. STP (had to look it up. didnt know it was spanning tree) :) yes i guess i would want that. i would like to have redundant paths for the switches.

5. not sure what bundling the channels is either. im assuming it is like teaming nics?

basically, i need to connect 2-3 racks together. they will have 2-3 switches per rack. its all windows servers. no vlans or anything, just all one subnet. i was not sure if i could just connect the 4 spf ports to the different switches for redundant pathing or if this would cause issues or not.

there would be 3 nics per server. 1 is for remote management, the other 2 would be teamed for reduncancy but i would like to plug them into different switches.

if you need more info let me know. or any more suggestions its appreciated.

Just a few more,

Do you have any routers? are these switches required to communicate to any outside IP?

What is the wiring structure between the racks?

there are 2 pix 515e firewalls (active/passive) that will be the outside world connection.

not sure on the wiring between racks. in the planning phase at the moment while evaluating data centers.

Jeff,

Since you do not know what your physical environment is going to be like, or really what you need this LAN/WAN to actually do. I suggest you read up on the below Cisco guides to help you out:-

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns742/networking_solutions_program_category_home.html

HTH>