I have a managed Catalyst 1000 8T 1Gb switch at the edge of my network. It's fine for how it is being used. I want to link it to a managed 16T 2.5Gb switch which will be the new core of my networking. It's fine that the link between the two will have to be limited to 2.5Gb(?). Both need to not only be managed but have rock-solid VLAN support.
I prefer to stick with Cisco because it's what I'm running into most frequently at customer sites.
It looks to me like the Cat1200/1300 2.5Gb series is not actually running IOS but a Linux variant. What would be the small biz Catalyst 16T 2.5Gb switch model which runs IOS for consistency's sake?
(Yes, the core switch needs at least 2.5Gb because I have some storage clustering traffic on that backplane.)
Appreciate any advice. I'm Ops and not NetOps and so I don't stay up-to-date on the latest when it comes to the networking kit.