3850's and 10G line cards

[Zach Smith]

Question about connecting devices to the NM-10G line cards on a 3850.  I know these are uplink ports and not designed to connect up to a host - but what about a VMWare host?  I've connected a 3850 10G port to a fabric interconnect before and it worked fine because that is a switch.  What about a VMware host?  Technically it is connecting to the VSwitch on the VMware.  I would have a 20G port-channel to a VMware host on the 3850.  Stack of 3 switches and 3 VMware hosts.  Would I need to bump up to a 4500-X or is connecting a VMware host to the 10G line card on the 3850 an acceptable practice?

Thanks in advance!

[Reza Sharifi]

The 10Gig ports on the 3850 can be used for hosts, VMs, servers, connecting to other switches, etc..

They are just like any other ports.  If you have a critical environment and you need faster switches with lower latency, you may want to look at the Nexus series.  They are designed for data centers, VM environment, etc..

HTH

[Zach Smith]

thanks for the response.  I asked because i'm under the impression that connecting a host up to a 10G line card port on a 3850 will work - however it is not a best practice and you'd want like a 4500-x or something since the line card 10G ports are designed to be uplink ports so connecting a host, like a 10G card on a physical server for example, would not be idea since the buffers on the ports are not that of a 10g port on a 4500-x or a 1g port on the 3850 and would then get high packet loss if dealing with 1g clients.

I don't know how correct that is but that is my understanding

Thanks again.

[Reza Sharifi]

You understanding is correct.  Although the ports can be used for anything you want, they are  really designed to be used as uplinks.  If you want to use campus environment switches, the 4500x is defiantly a better choice, but as I said before, if you haven't purchase the 4500x, you may want to look at Nexus.  Cisco is also coming up with a new 3850 switch that comes with 24 10Gig copper ports and this could be another option if you can use copper and wait until June/July of this year.

HTH