Server Farm Design

[abbasali5]

In a small environment, is it viable to connect server farm directly to Nexus 7700 switches for LAN/SAN connectivity instead of adding Nexus 5500 switches between the servers and Nexus 7706 switches.  Not sure if 7700 can support FCoE instead of Native Fiber Channel or iSCSI.

I have a customer looking to refresh his network and we are going to propose Collapsed Core.  Dual 7706 will act as Core/Data Center and for the seven IDFs, I am going to go with Cisco Catalyst Series either 3650 or 3850.  

I will connect each IDF switch to (2) 7706 with vPC.  VPC peer link will be established between (2) 7706.

Thanks,

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

F3 series modules for the 7700 series support FCOE. As for collapsed core for both data center and the users, it should work fine, but just be aware that the nexus is designed for data centers and not campus cores and so it may not offer all features that you may need in the campus network.

Also, just know if you use collapsed core, if something happens to the core switches, servers and storage is different vlans can't communicate.

HTH

[abbasali5]

Thanks Reza!

I agree that Nexus is designed for Data Center, but if you look at the Cisco product selection,  Nexus 7700 appears at both (Data Center and Campus).

This is always tricky because if I choose to go with  pure Cisco Catalyst such as Cisco 4500/6500/6800 instead of Nexus 7706 then I am leaving out the option for customer to take the advantage of Unified Fabric,  Data Center Virtualization etc.  

I think that Nexus 7700 for both Core/Campus and Data Center give the customer the best of the both world.

If it was an enterprise customer then I would have thought about designing the network with both platforms.  Catalyst 6800 act as a Campus Backbone and Nexus 7700 for the Data Center.

One of the advantages that the customer might lose is Service Modules that go directly into the Catalyst platform, but you could go with appliance to make up for that.

Catalyst Access switches will provide all the features such as POE+, for Voice over IP, but not sure if I could connect Cisco UC&C servers directly into Nexus 7700 or I should set aside couple of Catalyst switches in the Data Center to provide connectivity to UC servers.

Please Advise!