Help with network design

[moon_blue69]

We are a financial company and we have all our workloads hosted in our office currently. This includes esxi hosts, financial feeds and telephone systems. At the moment we are on single floor we have two Catalyst 6808 VSS in active standby mode as core and 20 Catalyst 6800IA access switches connected to it. For wireless we use Cisco Aironet APs an VWLC controlleData centerrs alongside ISE and Prime.

We are moving office next year and we are looking to put all the workloads and internet breakout into a datacenter away from the office. In the new office we will be spanned across three floors and we estimate to have 30- 48 port access switches to meet current and future requirements. We are looking at catalyst 9300 series for access layer and core. Each floor will have 10 switches. My question is where would I place the core; in the datacenter or in the office? If it is in the datacenter what device would we terminate the up-links from these access layer stacks? We can have 10Gbps vpls links from the datacenter to the office.

Any suggestions or advises are highly appreciated.

[balaji.bandi]

As per Cisco new valid Desgin

Cat 9500 or Cat 9600 as Core

Cat 9300 can act as Access Switches

Core should be on premisis.

In the DC, you need look for Nexus switches for More Server Traffic processing.

You need to Look how you have connectivity betweek DC and your onsite premises ?

high levelook like this.

users----Access 9300---- CORE (95/96XX)---WAN------DC---Nexus--Servers.

Make sense ?

[moon_blue69]

Thank you for the quick response.

The servers are all virtual. At the moment hosts are connected to Dell S4048ON  TOR (top of the rack)switches which is connected to the core catalyst 6800. Is your nexus recommendation purely for performance? Also we will be rolling out NSX-T which requires BGP. 

As for connectivity we will use VPLS 1Gbps minimimum

[Giovanni Alexander Molina]

I think the core switch should be the termination of the access switches in the office otherwise you will have to cable to the datacenter all the access switches to the core or a link from a specific switch in cascade to the core SW in the datacenter, which its not so recomended, another thing would be to consider getting some nexus for the servers if you have the budget for them, but if not the segmentation should be done by the moment with the actual switches.

About the switches the 9300 could work as access, you can find out the model "C9300-48UXM" which haves 12 multispeed copper ports and you can add the module of your convinience.

I think this illustration can help with the idea of the design and segmentation of the network related with the connectivity:

Best regards,

[moon_blue69]

Thank you, it is really helpful.