Hello Leolaohoo
Thank you for your response.
>Any monkey can say this (no offense to anyone except the consultant). What's the supervisor engine? Sup720? or Sup2T? VSS or not?
You will be surprised and I disagree as my company has had 6 different 3rd party companies submit recommendations and I have rejected all except this one as the others were crazy......school boy network design...let’s not get into those details for now anyways.
They have not given those absolute details yet as mgmt. have not yet reverted back to them as they were waiting for me to start.
I am not even sure what the spec of the HP 5406zl will be i.e. multiple/single mgmt. modules on each switch & the port density, etc…
Also as mentioned earlier the initial consultancy was free so now if we go back it will be to first guarantee the orders than discuss it further; these were the terms I have been told were agreed right in the beginning.
So the answer to your question I don’t know yet. Currently I am not familiar with this 65xx model of the switch & I will have to read up on it to bring myself up to speed.
But I am very curious to know the reason for your question?
What diff will it make to the design as L 3 routing will/has to be performed on each site.
>Why mix Cisco and HP? Financial budget?
Yes it is only due to budget problems that is the message from mgmt. team.
I wish we had some company in UK who would be Cisco top level partners and challenge any HP Procurve price.
But then HP wins on Life time warranties and free IOS upgrades.
> Or someone just want to make this difficult to the people who are meant to configure and maintain?
As for the above comment I would say yes to both but I am not sure how this will work in the first case?
Mgmt. Team have insisted that as part of the requirement of this exercise is that all local sites should keep functioning in case of the LES circuit failure which has happened in the past.
Another reason I heard rumours of not sure how true but the thinking behind this from mgmt. team is if they sell one site office i.e. the business they can sell it easily. So the Server team plan is to seize FSMO roles on that site delete all unwanted user accounts & GPO & OU’s from AD and that’s all that office is entirely independent without the requirement of it being have to be redeployed with any further investment. From network side they will terminate the LES circuit & the local L3 switch can carry on routing as it would do normally.
> What's the topology like for the sites?
As mentioned earlier currently all sites are connected in a Star Topology using LES connections to HO. Once the data center has been chosen all these sites will than have a signle LES connection going back to the Data Center as opposed to HO as it currently stands. Also the internet feed will be relocated to the Data Center.
This LES Lan Extension is simply a fibre Layer 2 connection thats all.
>Why use all layer 3 on all sites?
This will ensure if LES is down no problems occur onsite.
Local Layer 3 routing will facilitate this as follows:
1. Ensure all vlans are routed locally.
2. The local services like DC/DHCP/DNS/WINS will ensure logins work on all XP machines.
3. Local F & P will facilitate all flat file access.
4. Building MGMT system & Access Control will work as that will also be part of one of the VLAN's.
There will be loss of internet access which is not very important to the nature of the business. But staff can still have quick access to emails using one of their mobile handheld devices.
So L3 routing locally is essential.
Hope I have answered all your questions in detailed.
The key answer I am trying to understand is how will 6500 & HP 5406zl work together using the LES connections.
cheers
