Different types of SUP Engines in Cisco 6500/4500

[Rangaraj Gunasekaran]

Hi,

Someone please explain, what are the different types of SUP Engines available for Cisco 6500/4500 Chassis, and what are differences & supportivity, how to determine or choose what SUP do I need?

Appreciate if there is a nice, easily understandable document available.

Thanks in advance.

Rangaraj

[Joseph W. Doherty]

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For the 6500 series, the most current sups are the Sup720b, VS-Sup720 and the Sup2T.  Not sure either sup720 is not EoS, especially the 720b.  Performance wise, the VS-Sup720 offers more than a 720b, and offers some additional features too, perhaps the most notable being VSS.

The Sup2T offers more performance than the VS-Sup720, it also supports VSS, and its most important improvement is its much increased fabric bandwidth.  If you were buying new, you would want to Sup2T (you might also want the newer 6800 chassis too).

All the foregoing supervisors come in two variants, the regular and XL models.  The latter supports much larger route tables (useful if you dealing with Internet sized route tables, otherwise not usually needed).

For the 4500 series, the later sups are the SupV-10GE, the Sup6, Sup7 and Sup8.  Again, not sure what's Eos, but suspect the SupV-10GE might be.

As with the 6500 sups, forward capacity increases with each sup, except for the 7 and 8, which are very similar except the 8 also supports wireless.

Also somewhat like the 6500 sups, the 6 and 7 come in two variants, the regular version and a "light" version.  The latter offering reduced capacity and/or features.

For new deployments, you'll likely only want to consider either the 7 or 8.

More information can be found on any of the above, on Cisco's main site.

You might start with:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-4500-series-switches/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-6500-virtual-switching-system-1440/index.html

[Rangaraj Gunasekaran]

Thanks Joseph for your reply, it helped.

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

Rangaraj

Start with these links -

4500 -

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-4500-series-switches/models-comparison.html

6500

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-6500-series-switches/models-comparison.html#~tab-b

It can be quite complicated but the key things to be aware of are -

1) switch fabric throughput - different supervisors support different amount of switch fabric connections which affects the throughput of the modules

2) some modules require certain versions of the supervisor so you need to check that. Also if you choose a certain supervisor because of it's throughput you need to make sure you choose modules that can take full advantage of that.

3) features eg. VSS is only supported on some versions of supervisor for both switches.

Like I say it can be a bit of a minefield in terms of which to choose but if you are looking to purchase new then the general rule is to go with the latest supervisor for future proofing.

Jon

[Rangaraj Gunasekaran]

Jon, this is what exactly I was looking for.

Nice document. Thanks a ton.

Rangaraj