Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T Baseboard

[mooketsijr]

Morning Guys

i have just bought a Cisco 6506-E Chassis, it came out with only the SUP2T Engine on slot 5, i have already stacked 3 switches (3750-X) as my core, i want to replace them with the chassis the problem now is my company doesn't have money to buy the 48 port switch and the fibre switch for the chassis, help me link the SUP2T Engine with the stack and improve my network. i also have the 12 port netgear fibre switch. help with the configuration.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

If the only thing in the 6500 chassis is the supervisor there is no point in using it.

You gain nothing by connecting your switch stack to it.

If you are talking about moving the inter vlan routing to the 6500 then you really don't want to do this because you have introduced a single point of failure which you don't currently have with your stack.

Might not be what you want to hear unfortunately, but with only a supervisor it is pretty much useless as it is.

Jon

[mooketsijr]

Thank you Jon

so what do you suggest Jon.. should i buy the fibre blade and 48 port copper blade.

[Jon Marshall]

If you want to use the 6500 then yes you will need some modules.

But even then moving the routing between vlans to the 6500 would be a mistake.

At the moment you have a switch stack which means if the stack master fails you have redundancy because another of the switches takes over. But with the 6500 you only have one supervisor so if that fails any modules in the chassis also fail.

If you do decide to purchase modules for the 6500 then you need to be aware of what modules work with which supervisor and what oversubscription ratio you have on the module as well.

Jon

[mooketsijr]

Thank you Jon, but do i really need to buy the 48 port blade or just have to buy the 16 port fibre blade?

[Jon Marshall]

You don't have to buy any particular module, it entirely depends on what connectivity you want for your devices.

Jon

[mooketsijr]

my connection is layers.. CORE ---> DISTRIBUTION --->ACCESS

So i want to make my 6500 series the core, all distribution link to the core with fibre connection. so all need is the fiber blade to connect all my distribution points.

going back to my first question, someone advised me to do etherchannel if i don't have money to buy the blades.

[Jon Marshall]

Do you have multiple pairs of distribution switches that need connecting to the core ?

What is your setup ie. is this a single building or is a campus environment where there are multiple buildings connecting back to one central building where your 6500 is ?

Jon

[mooketsijr]

its kind of a campus, multiple buildings connecting back to one central building where my 6500 is. there are multiple distribution switches that need to connect to the CORE... i never used a chassis before. so after buying the fiber blade and connect all my distributions to the core.. do i need to configure anything? i mean for the Engine to recognize the Blade?

[Jon Marshall]

You obviously need to configure the ports etc. but the switch should recognise the module as long as you have an IOS that supports it.

There is nothing extra to do, you just slot the module in.

If you are connecting all your distribution switches to the 6500 then if you don't need a vlan/IP subnet in multiple buildings then you should use L3 connections to the 6500.

Note also that you may want to consider at some time in the future a second supervisor or another chassis as this 6500 with one supervisor is a single point of failure ie. if it goes then there is no communication between buildings.

Jon