Replacing a L3 core-switch. Suggestions about design and equipment

[juntao]

Hi everyone!

A little introduction:

If I'm posting this is the wrong location, or something like that please let me know. Got a recomendation from a friend to join this site

Alright. The story behind this is that I just graduated from a Networking Education, and just landed my first job a couple of months ago. Anyhow, was looking for a place do dicuss certain networking issues that I would come across, since I got no experience, and there is really noone to ask either.

The issue:

The current issue I stand before is this;
We have a L3 switch, that is acting like a core switch at one of our sites (please see attached topology):

The switch KOSS001, needs to be replaced. I had to restart it the other day, since that switch became unavailable with both SSH and console. Specs of the switch is below (from show tech buffers):

Product: HP J9145A
Name: HP 2910al-24G Switch
Date: Aug 22 2016 10:56:10
Build: 1784

If you look at the topology I have attached, you can see that the KOSS001 is a like a core L3 switch, and all traffic goses through it. About ~300 users. I need to replace this, since it has repeated problems.

What do you recommend in terms of equipment?

The following would be some kind of speccs:

> Needs to be Layer 3
> Needs to be HP (don't sue me, company policy)
> Needs a "stacking" solution (both for power redundancy etc).

Or do you got something else in mind?

If the switch would fail today, the whole site would be affected. Is it hard to configure stacking for HP-switches?
Any suggestions or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks you all very much.

Best regards Conny.

 

[sdifox]

What is your question? Are you looking to change the topology, or are you looking for recommendation for a model?

 

[juntao]

I was wondering what you recommend for equipment

The speccs is:

> Needs to be Layer 3
> Needs to be HP (don't sue me, company policy)
> Needs a "stacking" solution (both for power redundancy etc).

 

[sdifox]

I was wondering what you recommend for equipment

The speccs is:

> Needs to be Layer 3
> Needs to be HP (don't sue me, company policy)
> Needs a "stacking" solution (both for power redundancy etc).

Aren't you using less than ten ports on the switch in question? And what kind of link is between hotel and outlet and what is the traffic pattern? I would guess most of the hotel traffic doesn't go to outlet.

 

[A5]

If your company is big enough to bother with an "HP-only" policy for network equipment, then you should have a service contract to get this unit repaired or replaced.

It looks like the 2910-series was replaced with equivalent 2920 models, so that's probably your answer. If you want to get by on something cheaper because you don't need that capability, I'd talk to your vendor.

 

[sdifox]

If your company is big enough to bother with an "HP-only" policy for network equipment, then you should have a service contract to get this unit repaired or replaced.

It looks like the 2910-series was replaced with equivalent 2920 models, so that's probably your answer. If you want to get by on something cheaper because you don't need that capability, I'd talk to your vendor.

Uber lurker sighted!

Never mind, read likes as posts.

 

[Genx87]

Get an HP 2920. And yes you can stack them. It requires a stacking module that costs ~600 bucks.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

A5 is correct on this. It sounds like you have a range of questions that needs answered, and if you are working with a company like this that has hardware vendor requirements then you should also have a support contact or vendor that can help you with this.

It doesn't sound like your core switch is in that high of a demand. Depending on if you want to change topology, and as long as a large amount of traffic doesn't need to be routed, moving the routing to one of the available routers and moving to a managed L2 switch may be a better move.

Considerations on if you need 10Gb uplinks, how many ports you need, what sort of L3 stuff you're doing, and what sort of redundancy you need, not to mention what sort of media you are running (fiber needs) will all play a part in your decision making

If you want a drop-in replacement, the low-end Layer 3 HP switches were replaced with Aruba insides (good stuff in my opinion), and a 2930F will be a shoe-in with stacking support, gig ports, fiber uplinks in 1gb and 10gb varieties, PoE options, and covers the entire feature set of your current switches.

If you are looking at anything else, including network topology changes, I highly recommend talking to your vendor, and would suggest doing so regardless.

 

[juntao]

Well, the hardware policy isn't really written in stone. It's just that we try to keep it to Palo Alto Firewalls and HP Switches. The Routers you see is managed by a provider, that hosts a MPLS-solution, so we just tell them what default gateway we want.

• All the traffic goes through KOSS001, and yeah, not much traffic between Hotel and Outlet, only alarms.
• The cables connecting it all are multimode fiber.
• No need for change in topology at this time.
• 19 ports are used at the KOSS001, there are alot of servers (VMWare enviroment and Cisco UCS) connected to it (that isn't showed in the picture).
• I will need a total of 24 ports, but I would like to achieve power supply redundancy, cause we got two separate UPS in the server room. Then I guess I need 2x24 switches.
• 1GBit/s uplink is good enough.
• PoE isn't really needed, but this would get rid of a couple of Power Injector for the AP's.

Well, with all this in mind, I will take a closer look at the HP 2920 and the 2930F.

With the stacking module, will I see the switch like one "virtual" switch, with interfaces from let's say 1-48? With the same configuration (like routing table etc), and if one switch fails, will the other one take over?

So like I assume I can connect the KOSR001 in port 24 of the "first switch" and then KOSR002 in port 48 (or 24?) of the second switch, and thereby get a failover?

Well, I thank you all for your time. I'm trying to get as much information as I can, but I'm really thankful for the help.


Cheers!