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DC/Core Design

dan.letkeman
Level 4
Level 4

Hello,

I'm working designing a switch system for our core/data center and I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations.

We have 5 esx hosts, 2 sans with 3 nodes each.  We have voice servers, a couple of routers and a few odds and ends.  There are 7 other locations aggregating into this datacenter via 1-2gbps fiber connections.  The bandwidth usage on these links is minimal, but there is a total of about 3000 devices aggregating into the system. 

My main concern right now is the 3560G's are seeing many ouput drops, due to the small buffer size on those switches.  I have been looking at couple of options to resolve this issue, including the 4948E, 4507E, and 3750X switches.

Budget being the biggest factor, I am finding that the 4507 might be out of the price range.  So I was leaning towards the 4948E switches for connecting the servers and iscsi san's as the 3750X is not recommended for iscsi.  Redundancy is important so I would like to have two.

The second concern is that I need to aggreate the fiber connectons and for that I was looking at the ME-3600X or possibly the WS-C3750X-12S-E.  I'm running eigrp, so this switch would need to have full routing, as it would also serve as the core switch for the 4948E's.

So in the end I was thinking that two 4948E switches uplinked to the ME-3600X which would do full routing for the fiber aggregation and any routing needed for the servers and sans.

Servers and Sans_________4948E________ME-3600X_________7 fiber connections

                    |____________4948E_____________|

I would look at a second ME-3600X in the future for redundancy.  This is the lowest cost biggest buffer solution that I could find.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Dan.

2 Replies 2

Reza Sharifi
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Hi Dan,

For aggregation switches consider the Nexus 5500UP series, as they are low latency switches designed for data center to accommodate Gig, 10Gig, FCOE, FC, etc....  You can also get the layer-3 daughter card which supports full routing with EIGRP, OSPF and BGP.  The 5548 comes with 32 fixed port and an additional 16 port switch module for a total of 48 ports.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9670/data_sheet_c78-618603.html

HTH

Looks like a great switch, but price per port is almost double of the other options.....

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