Core switch(es) - what do you have plugged in?

[broc]

This may sound like a daft question, but what have you got plugged into your core switches?

 

Apart from the obvious connections, such as servers, switch uplinks, links to remote network cabinets, WAN & WLAN links what else have you got plugged in?

 

I am looking at our core switches (2x HP3500-24G) & I find the people who put the network together have got UPS management & DELL Server DRAC links patched in as well as all the normal stuff. These are taking up almost as many ports as the servers. Given that the core switches & all the others in the rack are protected by UPS is there any reason for them to be in the core switch?

 

Thanks

[tmcd35]

At the moment - 2 full ICT suites. Gotta get round to recabling the network next year. Get the suites onto their own local switches.

[3s-gtech]

Nothing bar the servers, links, VPN box etc. The network cabling for the block which the server room is in just comes straight back there, but it's still on an edge switch which is then connected to the core with copper.

[Oaktech]

we have 2 core switches, one is in the server room and one elsewhere, the one in the server room accepts most copper and all fibre links from the edge switches, and all the connections from servers, we do have the UPS links through it as well, as we need to know if, when put under load in an emergency, a UPS has a hissy fit! The other core switch accepts a number of edge switch connections that are old and only uplinked via copper and are therefore distance limited, and also has admin machines hung off of it as some of those are also UPS'd to allow MIS continuity (the IT office is also on a direct fibre link back to the main core switch and UPS'd)

[Duke]

Hmm, I think the logic is that the core switch has lots of resiliency so if everything else goes down, your core switch would still be up and you may want access to lights-out management for your servers, UPS, etc. Having said that, you're not going to access those things very often (I hope!) and often they run at 100Mb anyway, so going straight into the core switch is overkill. If you have the free ports, then I don't see the harm of patching them straight into the core switch, but if you need the bandwidth/ports for other things then I'd hang an extra, cheaper switch off the core switch for 'auxiliary' services and patch those types of things into that. If possible, put that switch on UPS at least so you can still access those services if power goes out.

 

If everything does go wrong, and you need lights-out management, and this cheap switch has failed... that's when you'll kick yourself I guess!

 

Chris

[SYNACK]

We are a smallish (500 student) primary so we have a stacked core with the fiber links to other blocks and even some workstations filling it up. We just don't have enough free ports to have a completely dedicated core. We have 2 cisco 3750 24port layer 4 switches stacked together with six spf modules

[twin--turbo]

ILO's

Drac's

SAN

WIFI

Servers

NAS's

 

Even some client devices but not many.

 

But we are not short on ports at the moment.

 

The big disadvantage of having stuff directly on the core ( if it's a single homed device ) is that if the core goes down then the access to those devices is lost until we repatch.

 

Rob

[pete]

Servers, uplinks, router, wireless controller

 

Remote access stuff (ilo, drac, management vlan) are on their own switch. Storage is on it's own switch (Storage <> Servers).