Expanding our core switch?

[sidewinder]

We currently have an Extreme Summit 7i, which has 32 ports, 28 MTRJ, 4 GBIC

We got it less than a year ago and back then we only used 16 ports of it. Now, thanks to new servers, new buildings and extra links to cabinets, we only have 2 ports left

 

The problem with this switch is, whilst its very good, it has no expansion options whatsoever. Nothing. And it cost over £10k so we really cant get rid of it

 

If we bought a new switch, would it be enough to just trunk say 4 ports together to connect the 2? Or would that cause a noticable slowdown?

 

If we were to buy anything it would probably be a 24port Gigabit copper switch so I could use that for the servers, and dedicate the Extreme to serving fibre links

 

Im also worried though that unless we pay a lot of money again for that, it would be far slower than the Extreme, therefore slowing the network overall

[DMcCoy]

You could get quite a lot of procurve for that

 

An example: The 7i has a switch fabric of 64Gb/s. The Procurve 5412zl has 692 Gb/s.

 

Edit: The 7i is listed as non-blocking. The HP doesn't mention if it is or not. Its a bit difficult to compare.

 

Have a look at the 3500s

[localzuk]

I don't get it. What does that switch offer which an HP 5400zl doesn't? :S Am I missing something? The functionality of the switch appears to be similar, but the 5400zl seems to have a higher capacity backplane? *confused*

 

However, regarding trunking ports together - yes this should be suitable, however it depends what you are going to be hanging off of it. If you hang your file servers off of it, then you may (highly unlikely) end up with a bottleneck... Whereas, a webserver would be served fine.

[sidewinder]

You could get quite a lot of procurve for that

 

An example: The 7i has a switch fabric of 64Gb/s. The Procurve 5412zl has 692 Gb/s.

 

Edit: The 7i is listed as non-blocking. The HP doesn't mention if it is or not. Its a bit difficult to compare.

 

Have a look at the 3500s

 

The difference in switch fabric shocks me. We were told that the Extreme offered an amazing amount for the money. Stupidly we believed the people selling it to us

 

Personally, I wanted to go with HP from the start. The 7i was purchased against my wishes. And it may turn out to be an expensive mistake

 

What is also annoying is that with the HP you can fill different modules with different connectors, whereas we are stuck with 28 MTRJ ports and media converters everywhere

 

Edit: Just found the old quote. We paid nearly 13k for the Extreme

The other quote was for a 5406zl with 3 modules and 16 mini GBIC modules for just under 9k. I take it we would have been better off with that

[bossman]

@sidewinder: that's what we have done we have a cisco 12G 3550 as our core switch and have used the cisco 3550 12T to attach all our servers to that via Gbic uplink this has worked a treat for us. All our other cisco 3560 switches are OM3 fibre to the 12G switch which gives us great throughput.

[kylewilliamson]

we've bought a 5406zl for our core switch. Worked out about £6.5k inc 48 10/100/1000 ports and the 16 gbics. Plenty of scope for 10GbE, though.

[Ric_]

The page at http://www.hp.com/rnd/itmgrnews/expect_more.htm does indeed confirm that the 5400 is non-blocking. It looks like you may have been screwed out of a few pounds!

 

You could always bu one to compliment your Extreme if your pockets are deep enough

[plexer]

How much can you get for the extreme? see if you can sell it and buy the HP.

 

Ben

[torledo]

You could get quite a lot of procurve for that

 

An example: The 7i has a switch fabric of 64Gb/s. The Procurve 5412zl has 692 Gb/s.

 

Edit: The 7i is listed as non-blocking. The HP doesn't mention if it is or not. Its a bit difficult to compare.

 

Have a look at the 3500s

 

The difference in switch fabric shocks me. We were told that the Extreme offered an amazing amount for the money. Stupidly we believed the people selling it to us

 

Personally, I wanted to go with HP from the start. The 7i was purchased against my wishes. And it may turn out to be an expensive mistake

 

What is also annoying is that with the HP you can fill different modules with different connectors, whereas we are stuck with 28 MTRJ ports and media converters everywhere

 

Edit: Just found the old quote. We paid nearly 13k for the Extreme

The other quote was for a 5406zl with 3 modules and 16 mini GBIC modules for just under 9k. I take it we would have been better off with that

 

Don't be too disheartened about the bakcplane speed...You're 64gbps is more than sufficient - as others have mentioned other technical aspects are more likely to affect performance ...the 690gbps of the hp is in the supervisor 720 range and the sup720 is really aimed at big campuses and small service provider cores. Plus you can't really compare any procurve with a the flagship Catalyst 6500 with Sup720 - even with the procurves impressive backplane speed.

 

For 10K you could have got a 6509 with sup32, redundant psu, and a 48 port blade or two. GBIC blades may have bumped you over that figure but you would have had enough spare slots to not be in the pickle you're in now. ALthough Extreme have good a good reputation from what i've heard you obviously bought the wrong product.

[torledo]

You could get quite a lot of procurve for that

 

An example: The 7i has a switch fabric of 64Gb/s. The Procurve 5412zl has 692 Gb/s.

 

Edit: The 7i is listed as non-blocking. The HP doesn't mention if it is or not. Its a bit difficult to compare.

 

Have a look at the 3500s

 

The difference in switch fabric shocks me. We were told that the Extreme offered an amazing amount for the money. Stupidly we believed the people selling it to us

 

Personally, I wanted to go with HP from the start. The 7i was purchased against my wishes. And it may turn out to be an expensive mistake

 

What is also annoying is that with the HP you can fill different modules with different connectors, whereas we are stuck with 28 MTRJ ports and media converters everywhere

 

Edit: Just found the old quote. We paid nearly 13k for the Extreme

The other quote was for a 5406zl with 3 modules and 16 mini GBIC modules for just under 9k. I take it we would have been better off with that

 

Don't be too disheartened about the bakcplane speed...You're 64gbps is more than sufficient - as others have mentioned other technical aspects are more likely to affect performance ...the 690gbps of the hp is in the supervisor 720 range and the sup720 is really aimed at big campuses and small service provider cores. Plus you can't really compare any procurve with a the flagship Catalyst 6500 with Sup720 - even with the procurves impressive backplane speed.

 

For 10K you could have got a 6509 with sup32, redundant psu, and a 48 port blade or two. GBIC blades may have bumped you over that figure but you would have had enough spare slots to not be in the pickle you're in now. ALthough Extreme have good a good reputation from what i've heard you obviously bought the wrong product.

[DMcCoy]

I do like cisco stuff, I just don't use it much because I really don't like their inflated charges for support, updates and features.

 

IOS licenses are non transferable

 

To get the latest version of the feature set you want, you also have to get a smartnet support contract on it.

 

 

My hp updates are free. Hardware has a lifetime warrenty. Is it as good? No. Does it work? Yes.

 

Does most of what I want without having to explain to cisco techs that while I do appreciate the fast response time 12am really isn't a good time to call