Correct 2960 for small datacentre

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-21-2013

Hi guys,

I'll try to keep this as short as possible, any pointers and thoughts appreciated!

I have two cabinets in a datacentre (with 12 CAT5 links available between them), at the moment I just have a single firewall and a very basic 3Com 2824 unmanaged gigabit switch in each cabinet that are connected together. This works perfectly as the traffic use is very light and is typically server->firewall->Internet rather than too much heavy inter-server traffic.

I want to improve the redundancy and reliability however. So I plan to get two Fortigate firewalls, put them in a HA cluster and have one in each cabinet with connections to the WAN. The servers are all VMware so have mulitple NICs teamed. The last bit then is between the VMware host servers and the firewalls - the switches. I'd like to have each server connected to two switches to give multiple paths, so I'm looking at two switches per cabinet. From doing a fair bit of reading it looks like I'll have no problem with this, STP should be able to sort out the multiple routes to whichever firewall is the active member at the time. There will be some need for basic VLANing as I would like to separate management traffic and certain servers I wouldn't expect to exceed 5-10 VLANs.

As I said the traffic is very light and from what I can tell I don't require any "fancy" features, and given the I need to buy four switches I'm trying choose a switch that is reliable but will do the job and not much more. If we experience growth down the road then we can buy more expensive switches then. So I've been looking at the WS-C2960-48TT-S and the WS-C2960-48TT-L, the first using the LAN Lite software while the second uses the LAN Base. The LAN Base version is virtually twice the price so I'm wondering if there are any features of LAN Base that are required in my scenario, does anybody have any thoughts? I've done quite a bit of reading but cannot really see a reason why LAN Lite should not work fine, but don't want to discover I missed something when it is too late .

All input appreciated!

Reza Sharifi · ‎01-21-2013

Hi,

Here is a link that compares the 2 together. The major different between the 2 seems to be that one supports mainly 10/100 ports (with the exception for one model) and the other one 10/100/1000 (LAN Base)

HTH

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-22-2013

Thanks for the reply Reza, your link doesn't seem to have come up though?

The 2960's are pretty much all 10/100 anyway so I'm guessing this restriction of LAN Lite won't be an issue. I guess what I'm concerned about is that I'll get the LAN Lite version then start trying to setup some VLANs, VLAN trunking or the failover on the firewalls and find some key feature is missing and all the money on the switches is down the drain . Any thoughts appreciated!

Leo Laohoo · ‎01-22-2013

Have you compared the prices with Cisco Refurbished?

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-23-2013

Hi leo, I took a look at some but to be honest I don't mind spending the money to get the right switch and have full warranty etc etc., I just don't want to buy switches that are double or quadrulple the price I need to spend as that could be better spend on servers right now. Do you have any thoughts on the LAN Lite OS? I'm struggling big time to get to an answer here as I'm just not quite sure what I'm looking at.

Leo Laohoo · ‎01-23-2013

Hi leo, I took a look at some but to be honest I don't mind spending the money to get the right switch and have full warranty etc etc.,

Cisco Refurbished is OWNED by Cisco. The only difference is the products sold are refurbished. You will still get the warranty as if you purchased a brand new unit.

Do you have any thoughts on the LAN Lite OS?

In our network, I avoid LAN Lite like a plague. IT'll depend on what you want to do NOW and what you want to do LATER which will dictate if LAN Lite is suitable.

Remember that if you've purchased LAN Lite and you've realized that you should've purchased LAN Base, then you need to purchase a whole new equipment because you cannot upgrade from LAN Lite to LAN Base.

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-23-2013

That's a very good point in fairness, I have contacted Cisco to see about refurbed equipment. I wonder if you could cast your eye down the thread to my last response at the bottom as I give some ideas about what I need the switches for there and you might be able to tell me if Lite is to be avoided or not, it would be hugely appreciated! The firewalls that will be in the cluster are Fortigates.

Reza Sharifi · ‎01-23-2013

Hi,

If you have the budget, purchase the LAN Base, as 10/100/1000 for access devices is a very common interface. Besides, you never know what can change. So, it is good to keep you options open in case you need them in the feature. Regarding STP vs Flex link, if you run RSTP, your network should converge within a couple of seconds. Also, don't forget to add port fast on access ports . For ports that are trunked and facing VMs, make sure to enable port fast trunk.

HTH

Reza

Leo Laohoo · ‎01-23-2013

I wonder if you could cast your eye down the thread to my last response at the bottom as I give some ideas about what I need the switches for there and you might be able to tell me if Lite is to be avoided or not, it would be hugely appreciated!

Personally, I avoid LAN Lite. Professionally, I'd recommend people avoid LAN Lite.

However, if one is in a shoe-string budget then this is one thing I don't want to argue about.

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-24-2013

Fair enough thanks, LAN Base it is!

Can I ask one more question - am I mad to be considering the 2960 (10/100 only) rather than the 2960S (10/100/1000 on all ports)? The speed out of the datacentre is only 100MB/s and there isn't a huge amount of inter-datacentre communication but there would be some, but the datacentre Internet link will be going to gigabit in time. My impression seems to be that lots of people still use Cisco 10/100 switches as you often don't need Gigabit, but maybe I'm mistaken here. If I need to look at Gigabit then it looks like the WS-C2960S-24TS-L is the cheapest 24 port 2960S to go with that also has LAN Base?

Thanks again all your help is truly appreciated!

Karsten Iwen · ‎01-24-2013

You say you don't have much inter-datacenter communication. But what about things like backups and storage-servers? I couldn't think about using 100 MBit any more for servers.

--
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Leo Laohoo · ‎01-24-2013

Can I ask one more question - am I mad to be considering the 2960 (10/100 only) rather than the 2960S (10/100/1000 on all ports)?

Sorry, but I don't want to be rude. You're opening post gives me the impression that you have limited budget, hence, I didn't want to push.

However, in a DC? You need at least 1 Gbps to each ports and 10 Gbps. You want 1 Gbps to each port because your servers will have them. You want 10 Gbps because you are going to be pushing significant amount of traffic upstream.

Now just by saying this opens a can of worms. Personally, in a DC, I would NOT be putting a 2960/2960S. The only time I'll put a 2960 (not a 2960S) into a DC is when the switch will be used for iLO/DRAK.

Now if I had a limited amount of budget, what would I prefer in a DC? Here's how it goes:

Limited budget:

Server switch: 3750X
Core Switch: 6500E with Sup2T (MPLS) or 4500R+E with Sup7E or Sup8E (VRF Lite)

A little bit more budget

Server switch: Nexus 5K/2K
Core Switch: Same as above

I won the lottery and I want a server at home

Server switch: Nexus 5K/2K
Core Switch: Nexus 7K

Reza Sharifi · ‎01-23-2013

Sorry about that.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps6406/prod_presentation_c97-494780.pdf

HTH

Karsten Iwen · ‎01-23-2013

You could also look at the Small Business 500 series. They seem to be suitable for your needs and also have a powerfull CLI.

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/products/routers_switches/500_series_switches/index.html

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

PHarrisonCWSI · ‎01-23-2013

Hi Karsten,

Those switches are interesting and they do seem VERY well spec'd for the price involved. To be honest though I think it would be better for us to go down the Catalyst route as it will give us better experience with IOS which will be valuable down the road as we scale up. Do you happen to know if the LAN Lite software will be OK for us in the Catalyst route by any chance? It's basic stuff we want to do really, some VLANing and then it just needs to be able to handle switches failing and probably using STP to figure out different routes to the firewalls.

I'm literally ready to hit "order" here but can find very little that compares LAN Lite to LAN Base or figure out if we will get away with Lite for now!