School network

[jslate1980]

Hi

 

I am currently doing an analysis of the network infrastructure of my school, and just had fibre and copper tests done on all up-link connections between core and edge switching.

So far feedback has been negative due to failure and age of cable used. Unfortunately this is not the only area that needs investment at the moment.

Would anyone mind answering a few questions for me as I am interested to know what kind of differences there are between schools.

 

- What speed is your network between core and edge switching(1gbps, 10gbps)?

 

- From the size of your network, do you think that 10gbps is needed in your environment(between core and edge)?

 

- What kind of network speeds do you have between server and storage area network?

 

- Are all cabs fibred between core and edge?

 

- Do you have redundant up-links between core and edge switches?

 

- Are most cabs connected by spf or spf+ transceivers?

 

- Would you agree / disagree in how important it is to invest and maintain your fibre infrastructure?

 

- Do any schools in the area have a secondary server unit or cloud solution for vm replication, in case of hardware failure?

 

 

Any feedback would be welcome.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Jon

[hallb15]

Hi

 

I am currently doing an analysis of the network infrastructure of my school, and just had fibre and copper tests done on all up-link connections between core and edge switching.

So far feedback has been negative due to failure and age of cable used. Unfortunately this is not the only area that needs investment at the moment.

Would anyone mind answering a few questions for me as I am interested to know what kind of differences there are between schools.

 

- What speed is your network between core and edge switching(1gbps, 10gbps)?

1Gb.

 

- From the size of your network, do you think that 10gbps is needed in your environment(between core and edge)?

No. Its not worth the investment at the moment.

 

- What kind of network speeds do you have between server and storage area network?

1Gb.

 

- Are all cabs fibred between core and edge?

We only have 2 cabs but they are connected via four 1Gb fibre links.

 

- Do you have redundant up-links between core and edge switches?

No, we use all 4 but could survive if any of them went down.

 

- Are most cabs connected by spf or spf+ transceivers?

TP-link spf+ modules in Netgear and Unifi switches.

 

- Would you agree / disagree in how important it is to invest and maintain your fibre infrastructure?

Maintain, yes.

 

- Do any schools in the area have a secondary server unit or cloud solution for vm replication, in case of hardware failure?

We have a secondary server but no cloud solution.

 

 

Just for a bit of background, we are a large primary school with 730 pupils and 100 staff. Hope that helps

[Rob_D]

- What speed is your network between core and edge switching(1gbps, 10gbps)?

- From the size of your network, do you think that 10gbps is needed in your environment(between core and edge)?

- Are all cabs fibred between core and edge?

- Do you have redundant up-links between core and edge switches?

- Are most cabs connected by spf or spf+ transceivers?

 

We have 10gb fiber ring connecting our core switches which takes in 5 of our 11 cabinets.

The edge cabinets are connected by 10gb (SPF) fiber or slower legacy fiber (SPF) to each cabinet.

Within the cabinets each switch is connected by a bonded pair of 1gb copper links. Apart from a couple of new 10gb switches (for the servers), that have 2 bonded 10gb links.

We have redundancy in the core loop, but not to the edge cabinets.

 

- What kind of network speeds do you have between server and storage area network?

 

We don't use a SAN.

 

- Would you agree / disagree in how important it is to invest and maintain your fibre infrastructure?

 

Agree. It's the backbone of your network. I mean don't throw money at it for the sake of new tech, but it should still be seen as important.

 

- Do any schools in the area have a secondary server unit or cloud solution for vm replication, in case of hardware failure?

 

Having multiple buildings on the same site, we replicate our VMs between 2 primary hosts in different buildings, these are DPM backed up onsite (in a third location), and then up to azure cloud backup.

[ColonelPanic]

- What speed is your network between core and edge switching(1gbps, 10gbps)?

10GB to high use areas (4 cabs), 1GB elsewhere (24 cabs) and a 100mb point-to-point wireless transmitter (over the car park)

 

- From the size of your network, do you think that 10gbps is needed in your environment(between core and edge)?

Yes, 1GB can be a little slow when imaging 30+ PCs through WDS

 

- What kind of network speeds do you have between server and storage area network?

N/A We had a 1GB SAN switch, but we now have direct attached storage to our cluster

 

- Are all cabs fibred between core and edge?

Not yet... We still have around 5 cabs running over 1GB Cat5

 

- Do you have redundant up-links between core and edge switches?

Mostly, but not by design. Most of our fibre cable runs are at least 4 core, so there are 2 redundant cores to most of the cabs.

 

- Are most cabs connected by spf or spf+ transceivers?

Yes, the 1GB fibre runs are all connected via SFP into HP switches

 

- Would you agree / disagree in how important it is to invest and maintain your fibre infrastructure?

Invest? Yes definitely, networks are much easier to manage when communication between cabs is virtually guaranteed. Make sure they're well insulated, otherwise roofing contractors will run wheelbarrows over them, and break a core or two (thankfully we had redundant cores)

 

- Do any schools in the area have a secondary server unit or cloud solution for vm replication, in case of hardware failure?

I'm not sure where the area is, but our school use DPM for backing up to the cloud. We have a termly onsite backup (Windows Server backup) to a NAS as well.

Edited January 18, 2018 by ColonelPanic

[kennysarmy]

SFP? or SPF?

[Rob_D]

SFP? or SPF?

#facepalm# I meant SFP. Sorry.

[jslate1980]

SFP? or SPF?

 

Whoops I meant SFP.

 

Thanks

[Katy]

- What speed is your network between core and edge switching(1gbps, 10gbps)?

10Gbps from core to 3 of the remote cabs, the rest are 2 x 1Gb

- From the size of your network, do you think that 10gbps is needed in your environment(between core and edge)?

Yes and no, some of our 10Gb cabs could run fine on 4 x 1Gbps but there wasn't enough fibre to do that, the other remote cab houses our backup server and 10Gbps means I can run backups over the network at any time (which usually hit about 1.6Gbps) without impacting on the student devices in any way.

- What kind of network speeds do you have between server and storage area network?

2 x fibre channel per server, not sure if it's 2 x 4Gbps or 2 x 8Gbps however it's 6 years old.

 

- Are all cabs fibred between core and edge?

All except one, which hangs off a 10Gb cab connected by copper (and although it serves 60 points it's only got a couple of wireless points and 1 PC connected)

- Do you have redundant up-links between core and edge switches?

No on 10Gb, yes on 1Gb. Not decided what to do for the 10Gb ones yet, might be adding a backup 1Gb to them when I get time.

- Are most cabs connected by spf or spf+ transceivers?

1Gb are SPF, 10Gb are SPF+, except the single cab that's on copper

- Would you agree / disagree in how important it is to invest and maintain your fibre infrastructure?

Yes, with crap fibre your entire network will be flaky. We replaced all fibre (and actually all cat5e as that was a mess too) in 2012 so we can run 10Gb down any of our fibre now.

- Do any schools in the area have a secondary server unit or cloud solution for vm replication, in case of hardware failure?

We backup to a remote building on our campus but we don't have any sort of secondary server or cloud thing for bringing VMs back online, if all three of our hosts blow up we'd have to wait for new kit to arrive before restoring the VMs onto them.

[AlanD]

To be honest, only you can evaluate your own needs based on size of school, numbers of PCs etc.

 

We do have a 10g loop between 4 cabinets that make up our core switches. But if it was only 1Gb I very much doubt anyone would notice....not least of all because it’s really difficult to get 1Gb/s out of a SAN/ server ...unless you are largely SSD.

 

We try to use 2x1gb/s LAGs between core and edge switches, not only to provide some overhead on bandwidth, but to provide some redundancy.

 

And some of our old fibre runs ....really old...work just fine after getting them reterminated with new fibre tails welded on.

 

I’m guessing lots of schools will eventually have 1Gb/s internet links in the not so distant future...some do now...so 1Gb/s links isn’t very future proofed...

 

I think lots of schools have two Physical VMs to provide continuation of service should one fail, but the reality is that hardware failures are not that frequent, and VMs don’t protect against configuration problems...nor ransomware...should a one server solution fail, a new server can be on site and working within 24hiurs using VMs.