To cable or not to cable

[tobiasclarity]

Hi All,

 

Just wanted to get everyone elses feedback on this i think i know which method i am going for but would be interested to hear everyone elses thoughts.

 

We are currently going to be moving the server room round which opens up opportunity to look at changing the way some of the cabling etc is done. The core switches currently sit next to the main server racking although at its current state all the servers just have cabling going direct across the floor to the core switch (not ideal positioning). Now i had proposed that we look at just properly trunking the 27 odd cables correctly across to the server cabinet (no more than 3 meters away) however it has been suggested that a secondary switch is placed in the server cabinet and then connect everything up that way with obviously far fewer cables going back to the core switch. I just feel in my mind this would be un-nessesary with the cabinets being so close together and if anything just add another junction in the process. Just wondered what everyone else thinks/would do?

 

Many thanks

[Jamman960]

The biggest issue would be bandwidth and avoiding a bottleneck - if you can put in a 10gbit link or two between the two you'd be ok otherwise I'd probably look at a minimum of 5-10 1gbit links. I'd probably go with trunking the cables across, adding in an extra switch would just be adding another point of failure as well as another hop in the network.

[tobiasclarity]

The biggest issue would be bandwidth and avoiding a bottleneck - if you can put in a 10gbit link or two between the two you'd be ok otherwise I'd probably look at a minimum of 5-10 1gbit links. I'd probably go with trunking the cables across, adding in an extra switch would just be adding another point of failure as well as another hop in the network.

 

Many thanks for this, exactly what i was thinking

[pete]

Top-of-rack switching is popular, but usually when you have N+1 racks.

 

What's the opporunity cost of a decent switch with 2-4 10GB links to the core and sufficient Gigabit or 10GB links where necessary (storage <> virtual hosts, for example) for the server rack?

 

It depends whether you're looking it as a cable tidying job or a "what are we going to need in X years?" job.

[CyberNerd]

I'd use 10GbE SFP+ cables and put a 10GbE switch in the server rack , thats what we did anyway.

Failing that I would use rapidnet. RapidNet HellermannTyton RapidNet Category 6 Short Link Sets

[sted]

id just run the cables (and half a dozen spare) if its only 3m