Server location

[dave.81]

We are currently looking at doing a major overhaul over our main IT suite which will involve knocking down a couple of walls to increase the size. One of these walls is into the current server/storage room and we are looking at the idea of moving the servers to another location onsite, running some new fibre and connecting them back to the current location, probably teaming a a couple of 10g links. Budget will not stretch to running a fibre with enough cores to move the core switch completely but hoping this will be a half way house and allow more room for the IT suite.

 

Will this have any effect on the network with them not being at the core switch?

[ITGURU]

We are currently looking at doing a major overhaul over our main IT suite which will involve knocking down a couple of walls to increase the size. One of these walls is into the current server/storage room and we are looking at the idea of moving the servers to another location onsite, running some new fibre and connecting them back to the current location, probably teaming a a couple of 10g links. Budget will not stretch to running a fibre with enough cores to move the core switch completely but hoping this will be a half way house and allow more room for the IT suite.

 

Will this have any effect on the network with them not being at the core switch?

 

Not really - you can have servers anywhere on your network providing you've got enough bandwidth back to the core. Also, just means if you lose the link from new server location to core, you'll be a bit stuck! That's why I always have our servers connected straight into the core, although these days a new Top of rack model, means that you connect servers to just normal gigabit switches, then uplink from those to your Core, and the core is just for links to access switches.

[dave.81]

Thanks.

 

That is what i thought would be the case, yes it adds in a bit more fault finding should something fail on the link but hopefully rare!

[Davit2005]

Not really - you can have servers anywhere on your network providing you've got enough bandwidth back to the core. Also, just means if you lose the link from new server location to core, you'll be a bit stuck! That's why I always have our servers connected straight into the core, although these days a new Top of rack model, means that you connect servers to just normal gigabit switches, then uplink from those to your Core, and the core is just for links to access switches.

 

Indeed, where we did our cisco training they had seperate main cooms room to the server room. Each server was connected direct to the core.

 

With copper cabling the majority of the cost would be the labour so running a few extra cables should not cost much more than the cable but with fibre you prob have the extra splicing, terminating and testing to worry about.

 

How much distance are you talking about between Servers and Core Switch?? Could you get long pre made patch cables??

Edited July 5, 2016 by Davit2005

[PotNoodleTech]

Always run the servers straight into the core if you possibly can.