New Switching infrastructure

[MrWu]

Hi all;

 

I currently have Netgear GSM7328S/7352S core stack with 10Gb Ethernet, plus 1Gb Fibre backbone on a mixture of GS724TPS and GS724..

 

We also have a unifi wifi network.

 

The Bursar is discussing upgrading this switching infrastructure, I wanted HP initially but had to go Netgear becuse of budget.

 

Whats the recommended switches that you have good experience these days? Is it still HP?

 

Thanks as always

[mrbios]

HP/Cisco prices forced me to look elsewhere, and i went with ubiquiti for the two buildings i needed to upgrade. Quite pleased with them, and they'd fit in nicely for you with your wifi network, their prices are very reasonable, especially on the gbics. The only part i found a bit of a sticking point is the lack of copper based uplink ports. If they just had some 10Gb copper ports they'd be absolutely perfect.

 

Quite a few others here have been moving to ubiquiti for switches too, so far I've not seen anything show stoppingly bad about them. (They lack any real "core" options though)

[NB9457]

Can I ask why you want to upgrade first?

 

We are currently running a 13 year old HP chassis system with 1Gb links to cabs and to be honest, it's still more than capable for what it does.

 

Do you run voip/cctv over the network?

[caffrey]

If you've got unifi wifi already, go unifi - we went from GS724s, I upgraded for POE requirements. For routing the USG will probably meet your needs

[MrWu]

Can I ask why you want to upgrade first?

 

We are currently running a 13 year old HP chassis system with 1Gb links to cabs and to be honest, it's still more than capable for what it does.

 

Do you run voip/cctv over the network?

 

I've had a bit of performance issues with my Netgear switches in terms of throughput and we are running UniFi/airvision cameras also. We are going to go full Office 365 and mapped SharePoint drives and looking into tweaking things as fast as possible.

[MrWu]

If you've got unifi wifi already, go unifi - we went from GS724s, I upgraded for POE requirements. For routing the USG will probably meet your needs

 

good to know, they work well with HP / Netgear core switches and VLANS / Trunking ?

[pow]

I find the 10GB Copper stuff more than capable for our school, using a M7100X as a core and S3300 stackables as edge switches, all with 2x 10GBe uplinks.

[caffrey]

good to know, they work well with HP / Netgear core switches and VLANS / Trunking ?

 

Yep, they all follow the same standards, I had them running in tandem as I rolled them out. The vlan config is a bit different on unifi though but easy to do once you get the hang of it, be aware that all ports are tagged out of the box

Edited December 15, 2017 by caffrey

[PotNoodleTech]

After seeing a couple of local schools unifi systems, I wouldn't even bother looking at cisco or hp now. Unifi all the way particularly if interested in their wireless and CCTV systems too.

 

What Unifi are doing now reminds me of what HP Procurve did to cisco back in 2004 - undercut on price by 50% and provide 95% of the functionality with 99% of the reliability, and as much more ease of use (fancy web interface , easy telnet menu driven interface, site wide switch stacking, etc, etc)

[mdrabble]

Unifi are currently in Beta for their UMNS system which will allow to manage all your Unifi switches and access point.

 

Have it running at the moment but monitoring 1 switch as needed to upgrade the firmware to a beta to allow it to be monitored.

[NB9457]

Unifi are currently in Beta for their UMNS system which will allow to manage all your Unifi switches and access point.

 

Have it running at the moment but monitoring 1 switch as needed to upgrade the firmware to a beta to allow it to be monitored.

 

Does it work with the Unifi switches or just the Edge ones?

 

It definitely will make the Edge switches much more enticing in the future as they're Full L3 and being able to easily manage them like this would be great.

[mdrabble]

Does it work with the Unifi switches or just the Edge ones?

 

It definitely will make the Edge switches much more enticing in the future as they're Full L3 and being able to easily manage them like this would be great.

 

Here is the link to the beta with details.

 

https://unms.com/

[AlanD]

I think I’d want to be very clear what I was trying to achieve...and indeed whether the switching infrastructure was in any way a bottle neck....and I’d want to know afterwards that I had successfully met that target. Simply and randomly spending money in the vague hope that more modern kit might give you improvement is....well a shot in the dark...and potentially a waste of money. Have you looked at the logs and bandwidth...do you use snmp graphing or anything....I’d be thinking about using lags between the core and edge swiches to start with...because apart from the cost of fibre modules...and I’d recommend the cheap Chinese ones every time in preference to the overpriced badged ones....it’s not a major cost ....well assuming you have spare fibres..

 

And I’d be checking that the servers are actually capable of delivering the kinds of speeds you are looking for...without SSDs it’s surprisingly difficult to fill a 1gb connection.

 

You could rate the odd edge switch to 10gb Back to the core...but I’d be betting ...well a small bet...now one could tell the difference...and even a contrived test with SSDs in the clients might be difficult to show any improvement except with server cached sequential data.

[Blue_Cookeh]

I think I’d want to be very clear what I was trying to achieve...and indeed whether the switching infrastructure was in any way a bottle neck....and I’d want to know afterwards that I had successfully met that target. Simply and randomly spending money in the vague hope that more modern kit might give you improvement is....well a shot in the dark...and potentially a waste of money. Have you looked at the logs and bandwidth...do you use snmp graphing or anything....I’d be thinking about using lags between the core and edge swiches to start with...because apart from the cost of fibre modules...and I’d recommend the cheap Chinese ones every time in preference to the overpriced badged ones....it’s not a major cost ....well assuming you have spare fibres..

 

And I’d be checking that the servers are actually capable of delivering the kinds of speeds you are looking for...without SSDs it’s surprisingly difficult to fill a 1gb connection.

 

You could rate the odd edge switch to 10gb Back to the core...but I’d be betting ...well a small bet...now one could tell the difference...and even a contrived test with SSDs in the clients might be difficult to show any improvement except with server cached sequential data.

 

Totally agree with Alan - you should look at setting up something like LibreNMS to monitor your network performance before blindly throwing money at things, although I'm not sure you can do that with Netgear - it was one of the reasons we ditched Netgear 10+ years ago. Their "smart" managed stuff is cheap, but it was lacking features even schools might use... and their web interface is *horrible* to use, with no CLI.

 

I found a nice middle ground with Ubiquiti CCTV/Wireless and HP/Aruba (with some Juniper) switching. I just didn't have the confidence in the UniFi switches with them being so new.

Edited December 27, 2017 by Blue_Cookeh

[AlanD]

...and there is nothing wrong with netgear, or at least not anything that would make me tear it out. Yes, some of the older stuff has a somewhat clunky, inconsistent and slow web interface....really slow in some models. Could not fault their support...after a switch failed during a firmware update I had to phone them...and they readily agreed to send out a replacement to arrive the next day....then I suggested updating the boot code in the switch which they talked me through patiently...after which the firmware went on fine and switch booted correctly. I particularly like the the way you can extend the core switch via fibre modules to remote switches in a virtual stack with single management...and yes I’m aware this is pretty standard now with other makes. And I note the original POster refers to a 10g link...which can be 20gb...if they completed the “ring” in the core switch. Maybe I wouldn’t choose netgear if starting from a green field site, but this is a school, I assume.

 

..and there is a CLI.....

Edited December 27, 2017 by AlanD