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netcmhFlag for United States of America

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Cisco Network Upgrade Plan

Hello,

I have a Cisco network running 10/100/1000Mbps. Should I planning on upgrading it to 10Gbps, 40 Gbps, or 100Gbps? What would be involved? New switches, cabling? I would appreciate input from anyone who's also doing the same or planning on doing the same. I would like to know what devices, cables etc you are thinking of, your plan of attack and approximate costs.

Thank you so much in advance.
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Ken Boone
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Ok so the question is why are you upgrading?  Do you need the bandwidth?  Planning for future growth etc?  How big is the network?  Are you an ISP?  

In my client base, the only folks that need 40 or 100Gbps are ISPs.  I have not seen any SMB customers, government municipalities or similar sized clients produce a need for beyond 10Gb at this point.  Not saying they are not out there, just most don't need it.

Skip 40gb.  That was really a stop gap on the way to 100Gb.  

However, there is a need in a lot of the mid market for 10Gb to tie in storage and virtual environments.  You really need to lay out what you have and what you need for anyone to really give you a solid example for your environment though.
Cost at this time will be hitting the roof real hard. Like what Ken Boone-- do you really have a need for those large pipes. If you trunk 4 ports on a switch or use lagg you have just locally increase bandwidth to 4gig-- or use 10 you already increase locally in your network 10 gig pipes for local traffic.. you will need fiber line coming in from isp that provides 10gig internet speed which meaning changing your core switch or router to accept 10gig sfp connection.

unless youre streaming videos to millions of customers there is no need for that locally
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ASKER

Thank you both for your inputs. We are not an ISP or a content provider, we're a small firm with about 300 people spread over many floors in one location. We have a couple of SANs, and are consistently moving towards virtualizing our physical servers which we can now fit in 10 racks. We have VoIP being put in with plans of gratuitous video conferencing, LAN segregation across floors or departments or device types ( we haven't decided yet) and video streaming for training purposes. I had read that 40G isn't cost effective and that the 10/25/100 is the way to go.

Our internet speed will never go that high. This is all for internal LAN planning for the future kind of a scenario. I thought of top of rack leaf switches for the servers with 2 spine switches to connect in a redundant and single hop fashion and a core (which could just not be necessary). The floor switches would also connect to the same spines.

I hope this clarifies the need a bit. Please feel free to ask more questions and I eagerly await your recommendations.
So in your case, you are probably looking at 10 gig in your core for your SAN and virtualized environment and depending on how heavy the bandwidth needs are you can go with 1 gig uplinks or 10 gig uplinks.  If money is not much of an object you can do something like dual nexus 9k in the core, and put fexs out as top of rack units in the other closets that would uplink with 10 gig to each core for an aggregate of 20gig.    It all comes down to money ;)
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ASKER

Money is an important aspect of this.

So, not 100 or 40, but 10? I think with 10G uplinks. I like the 20G aggregate idea.
I seriously doubt you will have a need for 40 or 100gig.  100gig is still very pricey and you can always aggregate the 10 gig links.  You probably need to perform  bandwidth study to know how much bandwidth you are using over your links.  You can do this easily with SNMP and CactiEZ.  Once it is setup it will show you bandwidth utilization on your uplinks ports and then you will know what is currently going on.  It might help you better forecast your needs.
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ASKER

OK, I'll set it up.

In the meanwhile, if we go the 10G route being cautious with the money, what equipment would be appropriate?
Well you have several options there but I would get with a Cisco sales guy and have them come in and look at your setup.  You might go Nexus router or you might go 9300 catalyst route just depends.  They can spec it and price it based on your needs.  They will do this at no cost.  That would be your best bet.
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ASKER

At no cost, wow. I thought for sure there would have been something involved.
They are hoping for the sale, so they will spec out gear for you and help you with the design in hopes of getting the sale.
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ASKER

Ah, but would they try to overspec it for their commissions. That's something I would be wary of.
They might.. so you have to ask questions when going through the process.  Make them justify their proposal.
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