Hello everyone
I'm looking for a new core switch in our central building. We have 5 buildings with about 150 user in each one. I preferred to use stacked 3850 switches for them ( Each building a pare of 3850s ) . Clearly, 3850-48P-E. I know 3850 is a distribution switch at best situation but our backbone is copper and there is no option to choose 4500-X or above without a lot of external media converter or a lot of GLC-T. On the other hand, it looks something like a wrong choice because 3850 can handle everything like 4500-x without converter . I also can not offer the enterprise to buy catalyst 6000 series because they cost a lot and need more space than regular. We also handle some simple traffic across the network ( Web , File sharing , Web APP ,.... and maybe Voip in future). We are going to change our location in next 5 years and we have to regenerate the design because all buildings will be integrated to a big one. So buying a catalyst 6000 is not logical . So , What do you think of my choice ?
BTW, last building is different . Our server farm is located here and more traffic is passing through the core ( Not that much - a 2960G is working as core switch with flat design with a really big broadcast domain ( I will start VLAN implementation after choosing core for the last building ) without any problem and overhead. What do you offer ? Our backbone is 10G copper! 8 Switches (2960x with SFP+ port) will connect to the core ( Switches are connected to backbone using 1Gb GLC-T because there is no media converter except this one introduced by Cisco ) .
What do you think of C3850-24XU-E ? It has 10G copper ports and we might find a 10G media converter without any problem with protocols and control data and .... for floors . We can stack them for redundancy any sharing back plane. It's stronger than 3850-48P-E ( switching capacity , Forward rate ,..... ) . Do you have any other idea? What would you choose if you were me?
Thanks a million
