Firewall to Nexus 5010p + 2148T?

[Balteck]

Hello, I have a very little infrastructure with 4 rack servers (esxi with 4 1gb nics connected to a switch and a pair of Sonicwall NSA3500 in HA)

I upgraded each hosts with dual 10 GB nic for vSAN and VMotion.

I wish to buy 2 Nexus 5010p and 2 Nexus 2148T, that I would use to have redundancy and HA for each hosts (2 1gb nics each on N2k and 1 gb nic each on N5k in LBT with NIOC)

I didn't use any Nexus series firewall and I'm confused about where connect Sonicwall FW for WAN connectivity of every VLANs in VM Network.

May I connect the FW on n2k?

I've attacched my schema. Each link is a physical cable: grey for CAT6 1 Gb RJ45 and green for DAC 10Gb SFP+

Thank you in advance

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

There is no need to connect the Esxi hosts to both 2ks and 5ks. So, you only need to connect them to 2ks. As for NAS, you should connect that directly to the 5ks as storage is delay sensitive and you want the fastest and shortest path. The other option could be that you can connect everything directly to the 5ks and no need for FEX at all. Also, 5010 is very old.  You can purchase the 5548 or the 9ks. See data sheets:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/datasheet-listing.html

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-5000-series-switches/data_sheet_c78-618603.html

HTH

[Balteck]

thank you very much, but the budget is very very low (for Cisco standard) and I can buy a refurbished 5010 and 2148t at the cost of n9k power supply.

I need to make a choice:

Buy an old, but very high quality datacenter switch like Cisco Nexus or a new entry level grade switch from HP or DELL or Quanta.

So I asked here if it is a good deal (5010+2148) and if is possible to connect my actual firewalls (Sonicwall NSA3500)

Answering your reply, I can't connect 10 gb nics of esxi hosts to FEX that it has only 48 gigabit ports.

Or I connect everything to Nexus 5k that it has only 8 SFP+ ports with 1 gb capability.

If I look to cable count:

2 gigabit patch cords from Sonicwalls = 4

4 per host gigabit patch cords from esxi hosts = 12

2 per host 10gigabit Twinax cables = 6

2 gigabit patch cords from NAS = 2

Total gigabit cables = 18, It means 9 SFP+ transceiver 1000base-T to each N5k for redundancy that is more expensive than buying 2 FEXs 

If I read correctly N2k is like a module that transform the 5010p to a big switch with 16 SFP+ ports and 48 gigabit ports. Is it correct?

[Reza Sharifi]

Nexus 5010 switches have been EOL (end of life) since 2012.  I would not buy a switch that is EOL and at least 6 years old. I would Go with new HP or DELL or Quanta switches if the price is reasonable.

HTH