We are currently looking making some switch changes in our rack as we are expanding.
We don't push a whole lot of traffic (currently 15MBPS) but would like to think ahead for growth.
We are looking at using either the Procurve 1800-24G which will provide web managed 24 10/100/1000 ports or the Cisco Catalyst Express 520-24TT which provide web managed 22 10/100 & 2 10/100/1000 Ports.
Connected to these switch would be our servers and then uplink to our firewalls.
HP is cheaper and provides faster ports, but would Cisco provide additional value over the HP because it's Cisco and their experienced technology?
if I could use a Cisco Catalyst WS-C2924 in a datacenter environment without any issues? Anything I should know about this model? Just looking for a cost effective and used switch to start out with. Switch Configuration and Graphs?
I recently acquired a 2950 switch brand new, this is now on production but I needed several things to be setup on the switch such as SNMP, setup an IP to access it over a browser, etc. etc.
Do you know somebody who offers a setup service for cisco switches?
i am thinking about upgrading things at the colo soon and am looking for some comments.
my current configuration is like so:
my bandwidth is delivered over fast ethernet and it is plugged straight into a cisco 3550 switch. i have the ip range they have assigned me cut up in to vlans the way i need.
i snmp poll the switch for traffic statistics with rtg.
this works fine, im only working about 10mbit avg so no biggie.
well, i am considering picking up another provider (super cheap cogent) to adding it to the pile. i want to get bgp setup and have my own address block assigned by arin (unless my carrier now lets me announce their address space out cogent). getting a ASN isnt a problem, and i have done some tinkering with bgp in the lab.
so anyway.. i am having a bit of a time figuring out what would work better for me, a 7200 series vxr router or a 4500 series catalyst. what would be the pros and cons of either one?
We're evaluating options on new switch deployments and wish for advise or opinions. We have experience with 2950's but want to move up into all gigabit devices. They will be used for pure L2 purposes as front-end access switches for server racks.
For our needs (24 port, all ethernet, L2 only) it looks like these two competing models fit our requirements and budget:
Cisco Catalyst 2960G (about $2150):
Switching: 32Gbps Forwarding: 35.7Mpps
Foundry FLS624 (about $2400):
Switching: 108Gbps Forwarding: 161Mpps
It's a tough decision because we have no experience with Foundry products, but from the spec sheets the price vs. performance ratio seems amazing (almost too good to be true).
You have to wonder if they get their ratings only under one specific situation in which you never encounter in "real world" use.
For those of you using Foundry what models are you using for your access switches to your web severs? Is there a better model for our application? What's your overall opinion of the products and service? Would you invest your entire network to them?
We have a mix of various vendors right now for switching / routing (Juniper, Cisco and Riverstone), but looking to the future being more vendor centric to either Cisco or Foundry for switching will be the model (using Juniper for routing). We've also considered other vendors such as HP, Extreme, etc, but ruled these out for a variety of reasons.
with a mini-hp VLAN problem I'm having. I currently have a HP 2626 that a local client had lying around, but I'm having issues understanding the VLAN setup.
What he wants to do is to setup 12 servers off the HP 2626 and use the routing & VLAN support. I was wondering what options are used in the VLAN config to get this to work, as well as how to route additional IPs that may be used later on to VLANs. My cisco training tells me to use Trunk ports, but I don't think HP uses that terminology.
I have been really trying to learn all I can about layer-3 switches and have gotten good advice on my other post. I've never had to use them before, and in moving to a new datacenter network I'd like to take advantage of dual feeds that require a layer-3 switch.
I've been looking at switches that are across a broad spectrum of prices, between $500 and $2500 or so. I'm 95% decided on the HP procurve 2610 since we don't push a lot of traffic (under 5mbps) and I don't need anything too fancy. I considered a Cisco 3560 and 3750, as well as Juniper... but for this thread I'm really interested in hearing about any experiences with the hp 2610?
Essentially, two feeds from my DC will go into one VLAN, which will act as the gateway for a second VLAN, which has about 7 servers attached to it.
Since the layer-3 switch will be routing all traffic from one VLAN (7 servers) to the second VLAN (dual DC feeds), I'm curious to know if anyone has any experience with the hp 2610.
I don't need to give each server its own VLAN. Right now they are all under our own control, so they can all share the same VLAN. So one big VLAN for our servers routing to one tiny VLAN for the two uplinks is all I need.
Is there anyone configuring Procurve 2650 with Spanning Tree Protocol? I want to have redundant up links to different router ports, but whenever enable STP, it seems lead to loss packets too much
I am going to setup new clustering system with 2 Procurve 2650. One of public access and one for private connections (most for database access, control panel connections, backup files transfering). Aiming using around 35-38 servers. All servers using SM board with 2x gigabit NICs
Is there any trouble I can face to with that kind of network? Or any better solution with the same budget? or should I use gigabit switch for private connection?
I know a lot of people here on the boards have a good amount of experience with the HP switches. I am going to be ordering a 2810-24g this week and will need a 1000BaseSX sfp to throw in it. Are the HP's brand specific? IE do I absolutely need to purchase an HP sfp and not say, a foundry or cisco one? I need to figure out which one I will be ordering, hopefully one I can source locally quickly, so that I know if its connecting via lc or sc and make the call for the cross connect. I am in the bay area, maybe someone will know where I could pick one up too.
I've been reading and searching on here as much as I can to try to help me in making a decision, unfortunately when I think I know what to do, I read something else and get confused again.
We are in the process of moving networks within our datacenter and will have 2 drops coming into our half-cabinet. We have about 7 servers in there, some for our own use and some for clients. In all cases, we manage the servers and are the only ones with root access (no need for VLANs for the purpose of protecting IPs etc).
We currently have a single drop and use an HP procurve 2524 layer2 switch that has been in there for over 6 years and never had a single hiccup. We also don't push much traffic at all though. Under 5mbps combined.
My question though is this: moving to the new network we will have 2 drops that are set up as HSRP on their end (upstream of me, I don't have to worry about having two switches). In order to use the dual feeds, we will need a Layer3 switch. One feed will be active, the other is not, both are connected to the switch via a VLAN and provide a gateway for VLAN2 to use. I have never used a layer3 switch, though I'm not *too* concerned since I don't expect we'll be doing anything too complex. My understanding is that one VLAN (VLAN1) will be set up with an IP address assigned to each drop and that VLAN1 will create a gateway for VLAN2. The second VLAN (VLAN2) will be all our "inside" client IPs that will then route through VLAN1.
I was briefly checking out the cisco 3750, but I think it's overkill...? I don't want to spend too much money, since I don't think we need any complex setups, at the same time, I don't want to waste money by buying something that won't work efficiently down the road.
My immediate short-list is now an HP procurve 2610, an HP procurve 3500 J9470A (not the YL), and a Cisco 3560 24-TS.
Of course, then someone mentioned Juniper (whom I have zero experience with either) and hence the title to my thread... I'm thoroughly confused. I was looking at the EX3200-24T.
Ok, so if I have to boil this down to some simple requirements/thoughts... here goes:
1. I only need 24 ports for now.
2. I use SNMP currently to monitor usage for clients (and overall)
3. I like HPs and have used them for layer2, I like their lifetime warranty and software availability
4. I don't have direct experience with Cisco at all.
5. Aside from routing from one VLAN (provider side) to another VLAN (my side), I don't think I need any other special features (hence the hp 2610 being ok I think, since it offers "lite layer3")
6. Some people say HP is great for layer2 but not for layer3? Now I dont' know what to think.
7. Currently use about 2mbps and might jump to 3 or 4mbps, but don't have major needs. I'd like for this switch to be able to last me a while though... so maybe 20~40mbps+? (but still not the hundreds of mbps that others here push
8. If possible, I'd LIKE to limit some servers to 1mbps or 2mbps on a per-port basis... but this is not a hard requirement. (I think this takes the 2610 out).
Budget: I like the $500 price tag of the 2610, but can spend the $1500~$2000 for the HP 3500, Cisco 3560, or Juniper. I would just rather not, if the price/features are not justifiable.
Hopefully I've provided enough information for someone to offer their insight? I think a few strategic key points or questions from someone with more experience might be what I need to help me bust through the "too many choices" fog and end up with the best switch for my situation...
I am looking for a Procurve 2848 switch. It's listed on ebay with different prices (from 650 to 3000usd). I wonder what price I should consider as a fair price? Dont want to pay much, but dont want to buy broken unit at cheap price either. An used one is fine whenever it's still working at all ports
I would like to buy a 24-port gigabit web managed switch, but I don't know which to choose.
The HP Procurve 1800-24 or Cisco SLM2024.
They have almost the same features but for example; the HP has (limited) lifetime warranty for example, and the Cisco supports IEEE 802.1D, Spanning Tree and Fastport.
Is the Cisco switch worth well over what the HP ProCurve costs? - The ProCurve has much less cache, but how much of a disadvantage is that for a switch?
What type of cable/settings are needed to access the console port of a ProCurve 2626 J4900A? the recent one I ordered wasnt working with the regular way I access these switches.
I use a null modem (crossover) female-female serial console cable and connect it to my laptop serial port w/9600-8-1-None to access my ProCurve 2900 48G series.
But I tried using a straight/null/rollover(cisco's) and none of them worked. I also tried 9800-8-1-xoff/xon. All of them are giving me weird text when I press [ENTER] numerous times. I can access my 2900 series switches fine, no problem, just these 2626 ones I cant. My laptop can definitely detect the port cause when I disable it, I get a message on my terminal window which says "disconnected". So I am messing up somewhere.
By the way, I actually returned the switch when it came the first time because I thought they gave me a faulty one and I got another one, but it behaves the same way. But the actual switch functionality has no issues as I can assign my servers IPs and be able to access them remotely. I just cant configure the switch itself without the console port.
I'm having a tough time finding a discernible difference between the 2810 and the 2848, beyond the $1k price premium on the 2848. Can anybody speak to the benefits of the 2848 over the 2810?
The only main difference I see between 2848 (48 ports) and 2650 (48 ports) is the vast difference in thoroughput and switching capacity, 2848 (Throughput: Up to 69.8 mpps; Switching capacity: 96 Gbps) having a higher capacity and 2650 (Throughput: 10.1 million pps; Routing/switching capacity: 13.6 Gbps).
So now, if there is a public switch for http/ftp/ssh and private switch for backups and there are about 35 servers connected to each switch, does it make sense if I go with 2800 for the private switch and 2600 for the public?
The basis of my conclusion is that on a public port with limited bandwidth, a user cannot continuously push close to 100mbps for long before running out of bandwidth. But on a private switch where the user has unlimited bandwidth and can push 100mbps continuously for longer periods and some of the users on the private switch might also have 1gbps port access.
I've been tasked with buying a "good" edge switch for my company's datacenter presence. After a full day of searching around and reading, I think I have decided on a procurve. The question now is what is sufficient for our needs.
We currently have 8 machines and will possibly add another 3 or 4 before the end of the year. We're running gigabit everywhere at the moment, and at bare minimum would need gigabit to 3 of our servers currently. Hopefully we will need gigabit to 4 or 5 servers by the end of the year.
Our website is of very high value to us, but we're also very much in the startup mentality of pinching pennies.
My question is if a web managed switch like the procurve 1800-24g has some performance/reliability downsides compared to like a 2810-24g managed switch. Looks like the 1800-24g can be had for about $400, and the 2810-24g for about $1300.
Searching around this forum, I saw a few references to the 1800-24g where the comment was that it would be great for a lower throughput need. Can anyone tell me why this would be insufficient for higher demands?
Our peak sustained throughput on the uplink to the hosting provider's router so far has been about 120mbps, and we hope to double this by end of year (and grow beyond).
If possible, I would like to be forward looking to the point where we will want to spend more money and have redundant switches in place to protect uptime. I do see that the 2810-24g is listed as stackable, but reading /rnd/pdfs/ProCurve_Stacking_Technology.pdf on HP's website (newbie not allowed to link in posts) seems to me to say that I wouldn't have any options for automatic failover to a slave switch with it. Does anyone know if this is correct?
Having a failover hot switch ready is not a deal breaker since we're only looking at switches that will give us high confidence in the first place.
How about comments on the wisdom of buying something like this used? My gut instinct is that I should avoid used since this is a high performance single point of failure for our entire internet presence. But I don't know how rock solid I should expect a used procurve to be.
In case you are wondering, our technical needs from the switch our modest. I will probably set up a vlan for each of our load balancing clusters to contain multicasting, but the only other feature I know of so far that I desire is the snmp reporting data.
I guess the root question is - would a web managed procurve leave me at a disadvantage for row performance or reliability compared to a full managed procurve?
