Connecting 2 3750 Switches in Stack with 2 2960 switches in full Mesh

[amit_kulshrestha_2]

Hi Friends,

           I have attached a pics  which DC design of one of our customer , as network engineer i have design this , so i am responsible for implementing it, now request you all to kindly guide me what would be technical problem i have to face in achieving this and how can i over come .Please be in detail. Waiting for your response .

Regards

Amit Kulshrestha

[petenixon]

Can you be a little more specific on what it is you need?

Just from looking at your picture, I would add redundancy to the "wan switches" by adding a further connection to each of your routers, otherwise if the switch on the left goes, you will lose a lot of services.

[Ankur Arora · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Using 2960 as WAN switches does not seem to be a good idea if you have lot of ingress traffic from internet, you might come across output drops as the oversubscription rate will be too high.

And are these 2960 stacked together? Because if they are not, then there is no way we can have an (MEC) with the 3750 stack(i don't think 2960s support MEC).

Thanks

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[amit_kulshrestha_2]

Hi Ankur ,

  I agree with you.Thanks for suggestions.I have attached modified diagram, kindly suggest.

[devils_advocate · Accepted solution]

The obvious question here is as a Network Engineer who has put this design together, why are you asking us what sort of problems you may face?

Are you just asking us to proof read it to see if there is anything obvious that will not work?

The major issue I see is that you have not mentioned whether the 2960's are stacked? For the design to work, they need to be stacked because you cannot create port-channels between them and the Core switches unless then 2960's are stacked.

Personally I would look at more powerful switches than the 2960's, something along the lines of the 3750x range or probably now the 3850's.

The second issue I see is that your servers are connected to the WAN switches. Is there a reason for this? Usually they would be connected to the core switches.

The final point is that you only have single connections from each of your WAN connections which begs the question as to the purpose of having two WAN switches?

The objective of having two switches is to provide redundancy/resiliency. If you have only one connection from each WAN then why do you need two switches as there is no redundancy?

[amit_kulshrestha_2]

I have attached modified diagram , please suggest.

The major issue I see is that you have not mentioned whether the 2960's are stacked? For the design to work, they need to be stacked because you cannot create port-channels between them and the Core switches unless then 2960's are stacked.

 ==> You are right , surely 2960 Switch need to be in stack form.

Personally I would look at more powerful switches than the 2960's, something along the lines of the 3750x range or probably now the 3850's.

==> This is constrain of customer, not our responsibility.

The second issue I see is that your servers are connected to the WAN switches. Is there a reason for this? Usually they would be connected to the core switches.

==> For this If 1 separate 2960 series switch can be used ?.

The final point is that you only have single connections from each of your WAN connections which begs the question as to the purpose of having two WAN switches?

==> Customer is having 1900 series of router , only two ports one used for WAN and other used for LAN.

The objective of having two switches is to provide redundancy/resiliency. If you have only one connection from each WAN then why do you need two switches as there is no redundancy?

==> Customer has agreed to have manual change at the time of failure.

[Ankur Arora]

Using another 2960 dedicated for your server farm seems to be a good option rather than increasing load on the core; if you don't have budget constraint..

Thanks

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