Replacement core switch

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 12:23

Currently using an aging HP 4108, it's at it's capacity and if i add one more Vlan etc it completely falls over which isn't ideal!!

Any good recommendations of core switches? We IP telephoney, IGMP for a TV system, around 15 Vlans, lots of trunked connections etc etc, pretty much standard stuff so nothing specialist required

Something with 6 fibre connections and 16 RJ45 connections would suffice, but the more the better, i'm not really sure what im looking for in a core switch so can anyone suggest something to consider? our entire network is fitted out with procurve switches but we would be willing to get a cisco core switch if it was worth it

York · 3 Dec 2009 at 13:11

We're using a HP 5412zl-96G as our core - but that may be a touch big for your needs. There's a 5406zl as well that has 6 slots rather than 12.

Ours handles everything we throw at it and has the advantage that it has 10gbit modules available so we can upgrade in the future.

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 13:33

We'll defiantely be looking to have the ability to move the backbone of the network to 10GBs capability in the future so that would be a good feature to have, the HP 5400s were the first ones i took a look at and price wise seemed a bit better than the cisco ones ive looked at, any other suggestions?

brainchylde · 3 Dec 2009 at 13:59

Also using a 5412zl. We replaced our edge network at the same time with ProCurve 2600's too. We aren't using all the slots though.

All works like a dream. Management is easy and generally any cisco skills are transferrable to the HP kit.

The price was the big factor for us - we found a lot of other organisations jumping from Cisco to HP too on the same basis - in fact, our HP kit was recommended by a Cisco engineer. Despite the price though, I think for most organisations you will find the HP kit is more than a match for any equivalent Cisco kit.

On a side note - we also had a quote for Dell kit. However, we heard a lot of bad stuff about their networking stuff so we decided against it (although we have 3 of their switches linking a Dell SAN and some ESX Hosts which seem to perform well).

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:09

Cheers, i think i will recommend to "the powers that be" that we go for a HP 5406 (5412 as York says is probably a bit much for our requirements)

I've been looking at the price of modules on the HP site and they don't seem to do any smaller fibre modules for them, i can see the "HP ProCurve 20-Port 10/100/1000 PoE+ and 4-Port Mini-GBIC zl Module" which look like what we want, we should only need one, but we need more than 4 miniGbic ports and the only other module they have on there is this one: HP ProCurve Switch 5400zl 24p Mini-GBIC Module J8706A which is far beyond our needs, is there anything smaller than that one with maybe 12 or 8 ports for hopefully a lot cheaper too?

York · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:13

mrbios said:
Cheers, i think i will recommend to "the powers that be" that we go for a HP 5406 (5412 as York says is probably a bit much for our requirements)

I've been looking at the price of modules on the HP site and they don't seem to do any smaller fibre modules for them, i can see the "HP ProCurve 20-Port 10/100/1000 PoE+ and 4-Port Mini-GBIC zl Module" which look like what we want, we should only need one, but we need more than 4 miniGbic ports and the only other module they have on there is this one: HP ProCurve Switch 5400zl 24p Mini-GBIC Module J8706A which is far beyond our needs, is there anything smaller than that one with maybe 12 or 8 ports for hopefully a lot cheaper too?

Unfortunately there isn't - or at least wasn't when I was buying our modules! I need another 2 mini-GBIC ports soon, and we've filled the 8 we had. Not sure if I should get a 24-port mini-GBIC module or a 20 + 4 module since they're very similar in price. Don't need any more copper ports unfortunately!

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:18

You're not really providing much information to go on...for a core switch I wouldn't touch much less than a Cisco 4507R-E these days, but that'll likely be over your needs...the procurves aren't bad but they aren't Cisco either, particularly when you get to any sort of advanced features...

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:19

York said:
Unfortunately there isn't - or at least wasn't when I was buying our modules! I need another 2 mini-GBIC ports soon, and we've filled the 8 we had. Not sure if I should get a 24-port mini-GBIC module or a 20 + 4 module since they're very similar in price. Don't need any more copper ports unfortunately!

You can make SFP slots into copper ports with appropriate SFPs, you can't plug fibre into a copper port - so I'd say it's a fairly obvious choice...

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:22

Hmmm so for our needs i guess we would be best off buying two of the 20 port + 4 Gbic port modules then, saves a few £100 as we'll certainly never need 20 mini gbic ports

2GB connections are about as fast as we need here and there are only 5 buildings and one has no fibre as it's where the servers are located, i guess we could make use of all 8 by connecting each building up by a 2GB trunk, though doesn't leave any room for expansion, it's a difficult one

bigredshark said:
You're not really providing much information to go on...for a core switch I wouldn't touch much less than a Cisco 4507R-E these days, but that'll likely be over your needs...the procurves aren't bad but they aren't Cisco either, particularly when you get to any sort of advanced features...

What advanced features do you speak of? as that was the main purpose of this thread was to gather our requirements and see if we should be moving towards bigger better things? Would these features actually benefit us (what are they?)

I'm very in touch with the configuration of HP switches, we have HP network monitoring software etc as well so it would have to be a good reason to move away from HP kit as we've never had a problem with them, as well as the fact we're a council funded school so money is an issue!

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:24

unless you need the features of the 5400 why not get the 4208 which has 4 port SFP modules available as I recall??

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:25

bigredshark said:
unless you need the features of the 5400 why not get the 4208 which has 4 port SFP modules available as I recall??

Well i guess in thiscase my question works both ways

Which has the features, which is cheaper, which would make the most of our requirements etc - i know i've been very vague with requirements but the nessescitys are there

York · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:26

bigredshark said:
You can make SFP slots into copper ports with appropriate SFPs, you can't plug fibre into a copper port - so I'd say it's a fairly obvious choice...

Well the problem is that by the time you fill 10 of the SFP slots with copper SFPs you could have bought a new 24-port 10/100/1000 PoE module. I'm probably just going to opt for the 24 mini-GBIC module anyway as after moving to a new server room we've got enough spare ports for the foreseeable future.

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:28

mrbios said:
Well i guess in thiscase my question works both ways Which has the features, which is cheaper, which would make the most of our requirements etc - i know i've been very vague with requirements but the nessescitys are there

well the big difference is the 4200's won't route, they're layer2 only. So if you need routing you need the 5400 (not that it's a fantastic router but at least it can do the basics.)

That aside, not much difference, except the 4208 is cheaper for the chassis and then for the modules. 4 port SPF is £500 or less, 24 port GigE is £750 or so, chassis is about £1k for an 8 slot version...

Felix · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:29

We went from a 4108 to a 5412zl.

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 14:32

mrbios said:
What advanced features do you speak of? as that was the main purpose of this thread was to gather our requirements and see if we should be moving towards bigger better things? Would these features actually benefit us (what are they?)

I'm very in touch with the configuration of HP switches, we have HP network monitoring software etc as well so it would have to be a good reason to move away from HP kit as we've never had a problem with them, as well as the fact we're a council funded school so money is an issue!

QOS and various resiliency protocols work far better on Cisco (or Brocade or Juniper or other higher end vendors actually). A Cisco 4500 is also a decent layer 3 switch (it supports BGP for a start which the HP5400 doesn't) and has loads of upgrade options available.

there is no doubt that Cisco and company are better, whether you care about the differences is a different question - probably not I'd say. The HP kit is decent enough for undemanding uses, we use it for iLo and DRAC networks in our datacenters...

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 15:27

Now investigating the possibility of getting an 8200zl switch with 10gb modules, we have a 3400cl in one building we can get a 10gb module for, replace the 2 6108s in another 2 buildings and have a complete 10gb backbone between buildings!

bigredshark · 3 Dec 2009 at 15:31

Given what you've said previously about it being a council funded school, that sounds like a colossal waste of money to me, so very few people have any need for a 10Gbit network at the moment, we have in the region of 15,000 servers and although we have a 10Gbit backbone we only did so as having paid for dark fibre the cost of lighting it at 10Gbit instead of 1Gbit was minimal. If you want to spend money you'd be better building great resilience in with multiple core switches...

mrbios · 3 Dec 2009 at 19:02

bigredshark said:
Given what you've said previously about it being a council funded school, that sounds like a colossal waste of money to me, so very few people have any need for a 10Gbit network at the moment, we have in the region of 15,000 servers and although we have a 10Gbit backbone we only did so as having paid for dark fibre the cost of lighting it at 10Gbit instead of 1Gbit was minimal. If you want to spend money you'd be better building great resilience in with multiple core switches...

Well for what we're doing creating a 10GB backbone wouldn't actually cost much more than what it would cost to replace bit's that need replacing now anyway, the 8200 switch was only a possibility whereas there are much cheaper alternatives available. For all the planned improvements we were looking at around £15k, but to implement 10GB backbone into that would up it to about £20-22k which would pay for itself over time.

Thing is if we're upgrading now, why not do it properly and put things in place while we can to keep things covered for the next 6 years or so? (it would also allow us to make some drastic changes to our currently fairly dismall IPTV system to greatly improve the quality) It would give us a lot more scope for improvements, trust me though that money won't be wasted and we will make the most of it

brainchylde · 3 Dec 2009 at 19:51

What's the life span of your network? For us it's about 5 years. If you aren't going to use the technology within that timeframe, don't spend the money.

You say you're looking about 15k, or 20-22k if you implement the 10G backbone, that's almost 50% increase in cost at your upper estimate!