Data Center Setup w/ 2 CAT 4500s

[bolds04]

I am looking for some helpful insight on what you might do in this situation. I have a very good idea on what I want to do, BUT I am looking for different ideas. I am looking for the different ways of doing the same thing. Plus the recommended way of setting this up.

Here is what I've got:

I have 2 CAT 4500s as the Core L3 switch. Both are running OSPF in area 0. I would like to either load balance all of my connections to the core routers and internet or do HSRP between the 2. I like the first choice. Would like your imput. More info, I have 4 core routers. We have one internet connection with 2 pix 525s. The pixes are setup with an outside DMZ and inside interfaces. I have one port going the internet router.

let me know what you would do to turn the second CAT up. I would like to know your ideas on this. Like I said I have a pretty good game plan on what I am going to do but if I have some good input from you all then I will have to re-think my plan. Let me know. Thanks, B

[micah]

You can load balance and get failover... Check out GLBP. However, when talking about router to router connections (L3 4500 to RTR) then you can use the routing protocol for both failover and load balancing without using HSRP/GLBP. HSRP/GLBP are useful for workstations/servers that have a more limited routing capability.

http://cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps1839/products_feature_guide09186a00801541c8.html

[ehirsel]

Since you did not mention other switches, I assume that both pix units, the internet router, and all other core routers all connect to the cat 4500's? That is, as far as LAN interfaces are concerned, all routers have their interfaces in the cat 4500's - same for the pix.

I assume that the pix units are in a failover pair, and that the cat 4500's are trunked together for layer2 redundancy and that the same vlan can appear on both cats.

I also assume that you want the pix to only see traffic destined to and from the internet, instead of seeing internal traffic crossing from one vlan to another, say between two core routers.

Are all of these assumptions correct? Let me know either way as what I state next depends upon this answer.