10 Gb optical ports and 1 GbE on the same Access VLAN

[marcus serrao]

Hi,

Configuration:

• 2 x Cisco Catalyst 9200Ls with 4 x SFP+ uplink slots,
• The 2 switches are cross-connected over last port (24) with a trunk for all VLAN between switches
• 2 x 10 Gb optical transceivers in SFP+ ports of each switch, connected to 2 data ports of each NetApp A220 SAN node (2 nodes) with 10 Gb FC shortwave transceivers
• 2 x ESXi servers connected to same 9200L switches that will be the only clients of the SAN over 1 GbE ports

1) On the switches, can we combine the SAN-connected 10Gb ports and ESXi-connected 1GbE ports on the same access VLAN?

2) This may be not a question for this forum, however, any idea if we can use iSCSI or FC for our ESXi servers to access the SAN considering our current configuration? I assume we can't us FC or FCoE as that would likely require us to have a fabric switch in between and we don't have one.

Thank you in advance!

[Joseph W. Doherty]

"On the switches, can we combine the SAN-connected 10Gb ports and ESXi-connected 1GbE ports on the same access VLAN?"

I don't see that, alone, as an issue.

However, SAN hosts can have very "busy" ports, which low end Cisco switches, especially without some configuration tweaking, often do not serve well.

To your questions about FC and FCoE, don't know these features for Cisco switches, however, in general, lower end switches less likely to support.

[marcus serrao]

Thank you for the reply. I guess we'll have to tweak the switch/SAN configuration to ensure we optimize the traffic. 

From my research, lower end switches like Catalyst vs Nexus don't support FC or FCoE. 

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

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@marcus serrao wrote:

From my research, lower end switches like Catalyst vs Nexus don't support FC or FCoE. 

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Very likely true, as SAN hosts are DC kinds of hosts and the Nexus switches are DC marketed switches.

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@marcus serrao wrote:

I guess we'll have to tweak the switch/SAN configuration to ensure we optimize the traffic. 

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BTW, the issue that often needs tweaking on low end Cisco switches, is usually buffer allocations.  Today, most, if not all, Cisco Enterprise LAN switches can support wire-speed on all their ports, concurrently.  But, if the port is oversubscribed, multiple concurrent microbursts will often overrun the port's buffer capacity.

[marcus serrao]

Thanks again! very helpful information