To top it all. You can have all C2k, C3k, C4k and Instant Access(C6800IA) uplink to same C6904 (40G/10G) line card  on C6807/C6500E chassis along side Wireless. All will work like a charm and enables a smoother migration from one to another. ... View more

Hi JDM, First of all, I would like to put to rest the confusion that Catalyst 6500E series chassis are coming to EoL.  Catalyst 6500E series is not going EoL and will continue its journey alongside the newer chassis Catalyst 6807. Again. Both C650E and C6807 chassis are available and will continue to be.. There are "NO" plans to have Catalyst 6500E EoL any time soon for foreseeable future. Regarding the the design recommendations for converting your existing HSRP/Standalone switches to VSS. I do not think i can do justice here without knowing all the aspects of your network. The overall approach of doing this migration would be to enable VSS on one switch and then transition the configuration and policies of interfaces to the VSS converted switch before enabling the VSS on the other switch, this would minimize the downtime and ensure a smooth migration. I found this doc on Cisco.com  which is not the latest in terms of the supervisor and other hardware specs, however does make a good point on how to achieve migration from standalone chassis running HSRP to VSS pair. check it out http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9336/products_tech_note09186a0080a7c74c.shtml Ultimately, the best way to have a design recommendation is to have a word with the Technical Services/ Advanced Services team who can look at your network and implementation details and suggest you the best methodology to do the migration. Hope this helps.   Vivek Baveja ... View more

Hi Jon, Good questioning, To your first question Yes, the Sup2T will operate at 220Gbps on C6807 with the current release.. So answer is Absolute Yes. it works.   Now to really fully avail the higher throughput made available by Sup2T on C6807, you need line cards which has backplane speed going above the current 80Gbps... and those are coming as I shared earlier. Your understanding is correct, the throughput is really a function of hardware(ASIC's) and clock speed.. you can not put more bits on wire than it is wired to do and clocked at....Here is way to think which will help in understanding and complete the picture. From hardware perspective, there are couple of things that determine the throughput on a modular chassis like C6k... A) The Fabric back place speed for inter card (Card 1 to Card 2) traffic, B) The Port ASIC's at which the front panel ports (Port Group) terminate and the Switching ASIC's which does the switching for a set of Port ASIC's and then based on switching decision (CAM table lookup, FIB..etc),  put the packet on to backplane or put it back to another local port on the card.  All of this decides the total throughput for a line card and sum total for a chassis. The total number of ASIC that needs to be put on a line card  is a function of, market requirement, cost and performance (over subscription). Its a balance of three. The newer line cards you will see higher Fabric ASIC throughput to backplane (as enabled by Sup2T), Higher Switching ASIC with higher capacity to do lookup and switch packets per second (pps) giving your overall higher throughput.   Hope this helps.. Cheers. Vivek  ... View more

Yes, vPC is not implemented on C6k instead VSS is. Additionally you can run LACP, PAgP on it. ... View more

Hi Jon, My response inline below 1) the new 10Gbps linecards. The 32 x 10Gbps linecard gets 160Gbps per slot with a 6807 chassis. Is this with the current sup2T ? [vb] Yes. 2) whether it is or not why does the 16 x 10Gbps linecard only get 80Gbps per slot in the 6807 chassis. It's a new linecard so why not give it the connectors for 160Gbps and then no oversubscription. [vb] The 16 x 10Gbps line card is evolution of the existing 6904 line card which meets the industry's lead free requirements by 2016. It has fundamentally the same ASIC architecutre as we have in 6904 line card hence scales to 80G backplane speed. 3) the 6807 can apparently scale to 880Gbps per slot. How is this going to be achieved ie. will there be a new supervisor to do this in the future ? [vb] The existing Sup2T which operates at 80Gbps on C6500E series chassis will operate at 220Gbps on C6807. The Sup2T is capable of scaling to higher BW/slot and a software enablement on C6807 will enable it.  With 2 x Sup2T's in Active Active config on C6807 will achieve 440G per slot and to achieve 880G / slot, you are looking at new supervisor. 4) as far as i know with the 6500 the chassis and supervisor are what determines how much capacity each slot gets. Then it is up to the connectors on the linecards as to how much of the capactiy can be used. Is this going to be the same with the new 6800s ie. [vb] Yes, you got that right. you buy a 32 x 10Gbps linecard and you can use 160Gbps per slot. If the slot capacity is then upgraded (because of a new supervisor) is there no way to upgrade the linecard to be able to take advantage of the increased slot capacity or do you then have to purchase new linecards ? [vb] The current ASIC architecture of the 32x 10G line cards scales upto a max of 160G on the backplane on the C6807. It can not go beyond 160G even with new supervisor as the backplane speed depends on the ASIC architecure. ... View more

Hello Tenaro, In very simple terms, both VSS and vPC both achieve the same goal of one logical switch however the way they achieve thsi is different. Lets break it down to Control Plane and Data Plane implementation of the two. The VSS has single control plane across 2 C6k chassis, the control plane of the second chassis is in standby SSO mode over VSL link. Which means that you configure and manage a single and there is single point of management and operations. In Nexus vPC implementation, It maintains active control plane on both the chassis and the two control planes remain in sync with each other a vPC peer link. From configuration and management point, both the switches need to be confiugured and managed. In regards too Data Plane, In both VSS and vPC implementation, the Data Plane is active. ... View more