Mixing 6509-E and 4507R-E at the core

[rzulueta315]

Is it possible to mix 1 6509-E with VS-S720-10G and 1 4507R-E with Sup V-10GE 10GE at the core?

If it is, does HSRP work the same way with the standby ip and will the vlan configurations be the same?

Thanks.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

rzulueta315 wrote:
Is it possible to mix 1 6509-E with VS-S720-10G and 1 4507R-E with Sup V-10GE 10GE at the core?
If it is, does HSRP work the same way with the standby ip and will the vlan configurations be the same?
Thanks.

Yes it's possible in that you simply confiigure the L3 vlans on both switches, connect with a L2 trunk and HSRP will work fine ie. there is no requirement with HSRP for the devices to be the same.

Is it a good idea - no to be honest. The 2 switches have very different capabilities eg QOS and very different throughput. I would recommend if possible to use the same devices in the core as it you have to failover from one to the other you may not get the same level of service from the other switch.

Jon

[rzulueta315]

So aside from Core switch redundancy and failover, what else will I be losing by mixing these 2 switches at the core? I agree it is not a good practice and I have never implemented such a design. I am however being asked to provide this as a contingency at one of our sites (don't ask why).

Thanks again.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

rzulueta315 wrote:
So aside from Core switch redundancy and failover, what else will I be losing by mixing these 2 switches at the core? I agree it is not a good practice and I have never implemented such a design. I am however being asked to provide this as a contingency at one of our sites (don't ask why).
Thanks again.

You won't lose redudancy or failover but the key things really depend on what you are doing with the switches ie. what features you have activated. If you aren't doing QOS for example then that simplifies things greatly but bear in mind the 6500 is a more fully featured switch. But you may simply want to use these switches for inter-vlan routing and that is it.

If so then the key difference could be throughput because the 6500 will support much greater throughput with a sup720 than you can get from the 4500 with a sup IV. Having said that -

1) if you are running only classic linecards of CEF256 with 8Gbps connection to switch fabric then it is not as bad as if you were running 67xx modules in the chassis

2) you may not need that much throughput but if you do and you are running CEF720 cards and you then failover to the 4507 then your performance will be severely downgraded.

Jon

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

So aside from Core switch redundancy and failover, what else will I be losing by mixing these 2 switches at the core?

Nice post from Jon (+5 from me too!).

One thing though ... the Sup720 has higher throughput compared to the 4500RE.  The Sup720 has, for example, has a dedicated 40 Gb (full duplex) per slot backplane while the SupV (on a 4500RE) has around 24Gbs per slot backplane.