4500 Switch and VLAN configuration

[cc2k.bank]

I will be starting a new job that has two 4500 series switches in place. I am new to switch design and configuration, althogh I have a pretty good handle on some of the concepts.

I will be tasked with setting up the most efficeient campus design.

Attached is one of the current switch configs. I have noticed they have 10 3com switches uplinked via the single Gigabit ethernet port 2/1 and seems all distribution switches should be uplinked seperately.

They have a phone system that is not VLANed out at the moment and this will be the first job.

Would the best situation be to just add a third VLAN (VLAN 3), give it an ip address and configure the ditribution switched to VLAN also?

This would also require me to tag the frames on each switch correct?

It does not look like there is any tagging according to the config.

Any help would be appreciated

[gpulos]

a common best practice would be not to oversubscribe an uplink interface. if the GB interface that all the 10 dist/access switches connect to has to aggregate more than 1gb of bandwidth, then this should be setup so all the dist/access switches uplink to their own port on the 4500(s).

i would also look into setting up more vlans so secondary addressing would not be utilized. of course this requires setting up more vlan interfaces for routing as well as changing the HSRP config.

it looks as if they also have a 2gb etherchannel between the two 4500s?? perhaps you can have half of your dist/access switches into one 4500 and the other half in the second 4500. then use HSRP to load balance the routing as well as track the vlan interfaces for failover.

[richmorrow624]

I noticed this post and wanted to ask a few questions about your reply:

When you made this statement:

"i would also look into setting up more vlans so secondary addressing would not be utilized. of course this requires setting up more vlan interfaces for routing as well as changing the HSRP config."

Could you explain this?

Also, why would the HSRP need to be changed?

And, your comment:

"then use HSRP to load balance the routing as well as track the vlan interfaces for failover."

How would I do this?