New core switch

[anton_vasanth]

Hello,

I am looking to get an expert opinion on what switch our company should buy for our core switches.  We currently have HP switches that needs to be replaced with Cisco switches.  Our network currently has around 14 fibre uplinks running across the building to each floors of the building. We have over 200 users in the office. I'm also looking to replace our Cisco small business distribution switches too.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Anton

[Dennis Mink]

do these 14 fibrelinks all converge in your current HP core switches?

what sort of termination do the have?  SfP's?

how many ports do you currently have on your core switches and how many are used?

are you looking at expanding the number of ports in the near future?

[anton_vasanth]

Hi Dennis,

Yes all these uplinks are converged in our HP core switch.

Currently we have distribution switches on each floor and have dual uplinks to aggregated core HP switch which has 1G sfp ports it's 48 port switch this dual uplinks are aggregated to increase the throughput.

I'm looking to have sfp+ with at least 24 ports.

Thanks

[Francesco Molino]

Hi

Are these fibers 1G or 10G?

I guess it's 1 G but if 10G it can change as but the type of core devices.

Behind these fibers do you have 14 switches or 7 switches (redundant connection to core switch)?

Do you have specific requests or features?

Also what's important is budget.

With low budget you can have a pair of 3850 fiber switch and interconnect then in hsrp for redundancy.

If you have a bit more budget, you can move with 4500x in VSS mode or catalyst 9500 in stackwise virtual (same as VSS).

The advantage of VSS is redundancy and management (only 1 config synced over the pair).

Using catalyst 9k switches, and adding the right licenses, you can have a sdn access design, and leverage Cisco DNA.

[anton_vasanth]

Hi Francesco,

These are 1G (sfp) links. We have 7 distribution switches each one of them has dual downlinks connected to HP core switch.

thanks

[anton_vasanth]

Hi Francesco,

I'm pretty interested in getting 4500x for core and 3850 for distribution.But, I'm not sure of what model of 4500x I need to get for this scenario.

thanks

[Mark Malone]

You could get a 10gb 45X so its future proofed  10GB 45X  WS-C4500X-24X-ES , there about 15k list price , you want resiliency too as its the core so either 2 of them or stack some XU 10gb 3850 models together

handy link

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/assets/prod/switches/cisco-switch-selector-how-to/index.html

[anton_vasanth]

Thanks Mark

[Francesco Molino]

Hi

You have the one Mark said and also Catalyst 4500X-16 (16 SFP ports). Based on your input, you have today only 7 distribution switches then 16 SFP is enough and allow some growth.

You can take a pair for VSS.

Also I recommend taking a look on Catalyst 9000 switches.

[anton_vasanth]

Thanks Francesco

[Francesco Molino]

You're welcome