Enterprise switches (tech stuff)

YosemiteSam

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This post is for the tech guys here. If you don't work with Enterprise switches, there isn't much to see here.

I have a single cabinet at one of our colocation and I'm about to add a second cabinet. Currently, the first cabinet has a couple of 1GB Cisco 2960 switches as the core and some Juniper SSG 350s in an HA setup holding the front door.

Now, I'm about to add a second cabinet and drop in a 10GbE iSCSI SAN for our databases and NFS to host our virtual machines using a EMC VNX.

To get 10GbE, I've got to get 10GbE switches. :) I've been looking at the Cisco WS-4900M, but I'm worried about them going EOL and I don't exactly like the setup of them.

So, I've also looked at the RackSwitch G8124. They look really nice and not priced too bad at just under $10k each. The problem is, they have only 24 ports and I would prefer to keep only one network with VLANs rather than having physical two. (a 10GbE and a 1GbE) This switch (and the others) are completely capable of doing this, but at only 24 ports it means I will be getting several of them instead of two. (failover purposes)

I'm a big Juniper fan, but I've never used their switches before. I'm looking at the Juniper EX4500s. Has anyone used them before? Even more specifically have you used (or know someone that has) them for iSCSI and / or multi-cast? If so, how is their performance compared to say Cisco's offerings?

They seem to have A LOT of upside going for them. The 128GB backplane and Virtual Chassis should be awesome when setting up LACP for all the servers / EMC. Top it off, you can get up to 48 1/10GbE ports out of them. (though they default to just 40, you need 2x4 port plugin modules to make 48) One of these is cheaper than two of the RackSwitch G8124s and I could get the same amount of ports.
 
Absolutely no idea what your talking about --but I just to look :D
 
I hope some don't feel the same as me right now after they read one of my medical posts.
 
sure........I like Skittles.
 
I understood 95 to 99% of what he said but I've never had to deal with switches.
 
Couple of Cisco Nexus 5ks and couple 1000vs will easily handle what you need. I'm using this setup now for my UCS environment 12 blades and 2x NetApp 3140s.

Full10g fabric over fcoE...runnning iscsi and NFS

It def aint cheap though. :D
 
Yeah, I've got a quote coming on a pair of the Nexus 5548P coming too. They are in the same price range as the EX4500s, but only 32 ports. They have one expansion slot so you can boost the total ports. Of course, with Cisco they nickel and dime you to death. You have FCoE? You paid extra for it. Juniper doesn't do that. It comes with the switch.

I plan on sticking with iSCSI though for simplicity. A little more overhead, but a lot less forgiving. 10GbE with TOE helps level the playing field. FC IMO just doesn't merit the cost overhead. (well, when going with Cisco anyway)
 

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