Question

Cisco Catalyst 3750G vs. Dell Powerconnect 6248 for Server to SAN connectivity - What am I missing by saving money?

Asked by: tscd

Looking to purchase two switches that will connect a SATA Dell PS4000 or PS6000 SAN with Dell R710 servers in a VMware environment.  This is for a small-ish company, and we don't have a ton of servers, nor do I predict there will be an excessive amount of bandwidth utilization between the SAN and the VMware servers.  I'm hoping to save some money by getting the Dell switches, however I'm curious to know exactly what I'd be giving up by using a Dell switch, compared to a Cisco switch?  My goal is to use MPIO mainly for redundancy reasons, but a nice by product would be increased available bandwidth, just in case that it's a potential bottleneck in the future.

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Asked On
2009-08-27 at 12:15:10ID24687782
Tags

cisco catalyst 3750 dell powerconnect 6248 server san connectivity

Topics

Networking Hardware

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Storage Technology

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Windows Networking

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Answers

 

by: bsohn417Posted on 2009-08-27 at 13:00:05ID: 25202070

Looking at the specs, they don't look that different... and probably aren't.

The only obvious thing is that there are probably a lot more people that know Cisco switches than know Dell.

The Ciscos will be more feature rich all round and far more reliable.

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-08-27 at 13:23:45ID: 25202301

The only piece you'll be giving up are some trunking capabilities.   EtherChannel and the capability to team the nics with inbound/outbound load balancing (aggregate bandwidth).  Normally this is not an issue since vmware will do round robin VMs on the nics and you can use LACP for outbount aggregate bandwidth.

Here's a few links that may be helpfull in step by step setup

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004048
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1001938
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004074
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003806
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004127

 

by: andyalderPosted on 2009-08-28 at 08:54:26ID: 25208931

Since it's iSCSI and you're using MPIO for load balancing the dumbest unmanaged switch(es) available will do the job, HP include a pair of ProCurve 1400-8Gs with the MSA2000sa and you can't get much cheaper than that, less than $80 for 8 gigabit ports or the 1400-24G is under $300 for 24 * gigabit ports. They aren't all singing all dancing switches but if they are just for the SAN side and not the LAN then they are fine.

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-08-28 at 09:37:07ID: 25209356

Andy - I agree with you but I would still use at least a web managed switch so as to set the nic and switch port to static 1000/full for speed duplex.  I haven't seen to many issues with unmanaged switches but I sleep either at night that way.

 

by: tscdPosted on 2009-08-28 at 09:51:45ID: 31621402

Thanks fellas!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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