Server connectivity for SME market

[shillings]

With the demise of the 3750-E, what are folks using within small/medium businesses to terminate mulitple servers?

I know there is the 4948E, but it is not stackable and I rather liked cross-stack EtherChannel as an efficient way to dual home servers.

Am I missing a product or new technology aimed at this market?

[hobbe]

The replacement for 3750E is the 3750X

they are stackable togeather but the 3750x have some nice advantages.

amongst other things like powersharing that are realy a good thing to have and if you are working in a datacenter environment where you rent racks/space MACSEC is a real treat to have. same with dark fiber links.

Good luck

HTH

[shillings]

Thanks for your response HTH.

I thought the 3750-X series only had a small 2MB buffer, so not much protection from microbursts, and therefore, not ideally suited to top-of-rack server connectivity. Although, Cisco don't seem to document the 3750-X buffer size anywhere, so maybe I got that wrong.

What about the new 4500-X? Again, not stackable though.

[hobbe]

I am not certain that the 3750E and G switches have the same buffer but afaik they do.

So the change in speed would be a thing to think about, however I do not run into it as a problem normally.

(not to say that i would want more memory for the next version of 3750 switches, feature req anyone ?)

if you want top of the rack, then the 4948 is a nice and fast switching answer, however I do not know if it supports VSS.

The nexus 5K however does support VSS and you can do some quite nice things with it.

So instead of the 4948 I would take a look at a nexus 5K switch if you need "true" top of the rack server connectivity.

I think that will give you more bang for the buck so to say. However remember that you need to buy sfp´s to it and that not all of the ports are 1gig capable

so if you are trying to replace a purchase of a 3750E then the X will do the same job and more albeit with some of the shortcommings also.

the price difference with a 4948 and a 3750x with the same types of port are aprox 3 to 2.

sure you do not have the same speed in the backplane but on the other hand you do not have the same possibility to add more switches to it with the benefits of more powersources and so on.

All switches have pros and cons.

For some reason i just never seem to come in contact with the 4500 series so I do not know much about them.

Good luck

Hope This Helps

[shillings]

Thanks again.

Nexus 5000 is too much I think, for most customers we deal with.

Nexus 3000 isn't quite as expensive as I'd thought. Would that be suitable do you think? I will dig deeper.

I didn't realise the 4500-X series, mentioned above, was all 10GbE connectivity and therefore VERY expensive. About 4-5 times that of the Nexus 3K, based on dollar list, so I'm ruling that out straight away. And most of our customers don't need 10GbE server connectivity anyway.

Bear in mind we have a tough time convincing many medium sized companies they need 3750-E series, and not the cheaper 3750s. This really isn't the data centre market place. We're talking an on-site comms room and a few racks, plenty of virtualisation and 50-250 on-site users.

[hobbe]

If you need sales pitches for the 3750x then you can just state that within a year or so that is the only (to the best of my knowledge) that will be able to be bought.

There is an EOS out for the other 3750 models.

even if that was not the case the 3750x is by far the best of the 3750 series, the powerstacking ability is a very good sales pitch aswell as a very very nice feature to have.

macsec is also a nice feature to have in some places.

EEM and TCL scripts are an awsome feature.

the possibility to buy cheaper switches and then upgrade if need arises is a very nice feature.

and at least where I live the 3750x are the same price or cheaper than the other 3750 series.

I have never had a customer ask for another 3750, but if they want cheaper switches with the drawback of less possibilities then they have taken a look at 2960 switches in different models.

The 3000 is something that I have never worked with (to new). but it sounds nice.

Good luck

HTH

[shillings]

I am still wary about the 3750-X egress buffering and it being pitched as an Access switch. I really like them too, particularly their StackWise and StackPower features, but for some customers, I would not be happy proposing them for server connectivity.

Maybe I am worrying unnecessarily? I realise it does depend on the applications and traffic types etc. They are probably fine in many environments, especially when a small degree of output drops isn't business critical. Thanks for your feedback on using them though.

[Alessio Andreoli]

Hi Shillings,

i have used the 3750-X for very big customers and even in stack ethy did not give a single problem. just make sure to install a stable version and no customer will be able to regret it. keep in mind that in the future you could even use the 2xTenG interface they have.

Suggestion, if you like the stack configuration you will be already aware of it but, shouldn't you have much experience with that, check again all the requirements of an upgrade and mastership/membership and so on. you can reda a lot about 3750-X stack in this forum.

Alessio

[shillings]

Thanks for the feedback on the 3750-X's Alessio.