iSCSI & Network Traffic on Cisco 3750s?

[volkan]

Hi Guys,

What are the pros and cons of running iSCSI & Network Traffic on the same switches?

We are planning a new build with 2 x 2 switch 3750 stacks in each site (2 sites). One stack is for network traffic and the other for iSCSI.

We would like to find out if it would be possible to run both networks off a single stack at each site this would drop the total number of switches we need from 8 to 4, quite a cost saving!

We won't have a lot of devices, at first it will be 2 ESX servers and an EqualLogic SAN in each site and the switches will be under-utilised.

So if we set the MTU of the switches to 9000 and run both iSCSI and Network traffic on separate VLANs, would this have a negative impact to performance?

Thanks in advance!

 

[volkan]

Thanks for the input guys.

We are looking at using 3750E-24TDs with the standard IP base, we won't be using the switches for any advanced L3.

I am trying to convince the client to run two separate stacks, but ultimately it is up to them. (We originally recommended FC, but they want to stick with iSCSI)

Out of curiosity would you rather run each iSCSI switch as a standalone and physically connect each server and storage to each switch, or would you prefer to run the iSCSI switches as a stack and utilise LACP between the SAN and Servers (each port in same port-channel, but seperate physical switch).

Thanks again.