Stupid question time

mrbios · 5 May 2015 at 15:53

Got my shiney new Nimble CS215 today and I'm LOVING IT!

Anyway to the stupid question:
I've got 2 x Cisco SG500XG-8F8T switches in a stack for my iSCSI traffic over 10GbE, and one 1GB link back to the router (8206zl) from the top switch of the stack

The stupid question:
Do i need to connect a cable from the 1Gb port of each switch back to the 8206? I'm assuming yes, as otherwise there'd be no redundancy in terms of management if one switch failed, but I've never used a stack before, so i don't want to go creating any silly loops.

mrbios · 5 May 2015 at 22:38

This is pretty much my first time using any cisco kit, I've always previously used HP procurves so when you say a port-channel, do you mean what i would understand to be an lacp trunk? (Trying to understand what googles giving me on that front)

mrbios · 6 May 2015 at 23:15

thanks i set them up as an LACP trunk earlier, worked a treat.

The 8206 is indeed a single point of failure, but all the VM hosts and iSCSI storage is also connected to those same Cisco switches. The iSCSI network has redundancy from host NIC through to storage array, that's my main point of concern really. Unfortunately it's not economically viable (aka we can't afford it!) to have redundancy to the 8206zl. Though it would be nice.

The 8206 failing is the only single component that could fail and take down the whole network as far as im aware, it has redundancy in terms of PSU, and i do plan on putting a second management module in next year (no money to do it this year) to give it as much redundancy for minimal cost as i can. Management are made aware of the fact that if this failed, there would be ~24hrs downtime, they're willing to accept the risk. It's a school after all so no major financial damage done like a business would have, and i take regular config backups to be safe

(...I'm not willing to accept the risk in terms of damage it can do if the iSCSI goes down with the VMs still running though as you can imagine

)

mrbios · 7 May 2015 at 10:37

I've never thought of removing them to be honest...although i've only just installed these new ones so I'm still fine tuning things...and learning some cisco terminoligy as i go

Once everything is setup by the end of this month i should be able to *fingers crossed* run everything for the next 5 years with minimal need to change anything, so maybe i'll get rid of the management side of things then and have them run solo