c7000, cisco 3120 subnets

[Terry Brent]

New C7000 system with

BL460s with 6 nics
6 cisco 3120gs nw switches
2 cisco 9124E fibre switches
HP EVA 4400 san
VMWare enterprise
The switches are to be redundant pairs.

I am replacing a system of several servers that were physically separated into two domains with 3 subnets each then star networked thru dumb switches to workstations / printers.

I'm told I must add a core switch, replace all dumb switches and add a router to get 4 - 10 subnets out of the C7000.

Is that correct ?

If not, can you point me in the right direction ?

Thanks for taking the time to consider this.

[Adrian Clint]

Terry,

This looks more like a Cisco/network design question than a Blade question.

Take the word blade out of the question to a network design person and you may get a better answer. If I was asking I would rephrase the question as...

I will have have 16 ESX servers each with 6 NICs. The 6 NICs on each server go to 6 different Cisco switches.
These Cisco Switches are Layer3 and have 16 1Gb ports used for the servers and 8 1Gb ports free (4 copper and 4 fibre) and have StackWise ports for switch stacking.

Can I configure these 6 switches as one virtual switch using stacking and do .......(whatever you want to do with the LANs and subneting)

You will need to buy the stacking cables from Cisco or HP - in the quickspecs

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps6746/ps8742/ps8749/data_sheet_c78-439133.html