design - Best Practices

[bberry]

I am in the process of creating an executive summary type document explaining the best practices of a hierarchical design. I have been looking through the SRND design guides looking for a good explanation of what belongs in each area and why. I am trying to get management here up to speed on things such as why a bad idea to have all servers in the core. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good white paper or a reference book?

[scottosan]

there is a good diagram at the following link

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_white_paper09186a00800c8441.shtml

[aalvarado]

I wouldn't necessarily state that it's a bad idea, depending on the size of the network. At any rate, I would recommend Top Down Network Design, Oppenheimer, Cisco Press.

[spyoung]

Heres a "at a glance" pdf that might help.

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/netsol/ns24/c643/cdccont_0900aecd800d8129.pdf

There are some excellent white papers on Campus network design on the cisco website. They go into detail about the design practices you can use in your arguments. These should answer all your questions hopefully.

[aohn]

My explanation is better understand by the techies. And assuming your design is base on Layer 3 Core rather and Layer 2.

I say, one of the main function of the Core Layer is for traffic to go pass as fast as possible. By having servers attached to this layer, you are require to create Vlan on it. This create more load on the device plus create complexity on managing the network. In Layer 3 Core, Vlan's are created on the Distribution switch thus ending spanning tree at that level.

Furthermore, if you want additional security on the sever access, it is more practical to have them on a seperate switch. You do not want ACLs at Core.

Hope this will give you some idea.