From: Guyler, Rik (rguyler@shp-dayton.org)
Date: Tue Jul 25 2006 - 14:41:18 ART
If you connect the servers into a single device of any sort it becomes a
single point of failure. In our case, our servers are connected to two
separate switches using a failover NIC team. But, that's somewhat beyond
the scope of network design as such and should be a standard adopted by the
server team provided the network design supports such initiatives.
Rik
-----Original Message-----
From: James Ventre [mailto:messageboard@ventrefamily.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 1:32 PM
To: Guyler, Rik
Cc: 'ccielab@groupstudy.com'
Subject: Re: What's your View about these
I'd consider your 3750 "stack" a single point of failure, if you're
using the stacking feature. I recently came across a scenario where
the stacking software between the 3750's wasn't functioning and no traffic
passed - in or out.
James
Guyler, Rik wrote:
> Our server farm connects into the network at the distribution layer,
> where we typically have better equipment and higher bandwidth
> backplanes. In our case, we use 4500 switches with Sup4s, which has
> been an excellent combination supporting over 300+ servers, mainframes,
minis, AS400s, etc.
>
> The 3750 series switches should also be a pretty good solution in this
> situation but the backplane will be much less than a more robust
> chassis switch. Be conservative on the number of switches in a single
> stack since I seem to recall the backplane in a stack runs at 32Gb.
>
> I would not directly connect anything directly into the core except
> for distribution and other core switches. Sometimes the demarcation
> point is not clearly defined so if your core and distribution layers
> are collapsed into a single device or layer then really, from an
> architectural perspective the 3750 stacks would be considered access
> layer but the reality is that they are still only a single hop away
> form the core so don't get too wrapped up into the terminology.
>
> Rik
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