Planning small Network

[rogerp_1]

Hi all, woundering if i can get some advice and help on a new lan we are planning using the following new kit Already purchased.

2 x HP 2824 Switch's
3 x HP 2524 Switch's with 1x g/b uplink module in each.

The network is a simply Windows 2000 domain with 10 Servers and around 40 PC's.

There are no VLAN, WAN's or any thing special, just a plan network on using one network range of 192.168.10.1 to 192.168.10.254.

I was thinkin of connecting the TWO 2824's together using 2 x network cables then adding all four pours into TRUNK 1. This i understand will give me a link between the two of 2gb.

As each of the 2824 have 1gb modules installed can you please suggest the best way of connectiong these up.

On a final note if you were to ignore all the above please tell me how you (HP) would connect all these switchs together to achieve best speed and redundancy.

I am open to all suggestions.

Thank you very much.

roger

[Les Ligetfalvy]

Already bought them huh... too bad because the 2824 has poor allocation of buffers. Any chance of returning them?

You don't say what sort of spacing you have between switches. Why trunk two 2824's together when you can get a 48 port switch and have fewer wasted ports and bottlnecks on the trunk?

Maybe a map might help in our understanding what connects where.

[rogerp_1]

Hi,

The switch's are here to stay i'm affraid.

The will be stacked ontop of each other.

Please ignore my port trucking idea and let me know what you suggest.

Thanks

[Matt Hobbs]

Hi Roger,

I've attached a design for you.

What I'd also do is either purchase another 1GB uplink port for the 2524's, or use one of the 10/100 ports to connect a redundant link to the other 2824. You would need to enable 'spanning-tree' on all switches before doing this to block the redudant loops.

Try to keep gigabit only devices on the 2800 series if possible. The buffers are optimised for gigabit connections. If you need to put 10/100 devices on and are having any performance issues you can use the 'qos-passthrough-mode' command.

For your servers if they have a second NIC you could either connect both to the same switch form an LACP trunk and increase performance, or if you prefer redundancy connect them to different switches.

Matt

[rogerp_1]

Thanks a lot for that Matt, just what i needed, a nice and easy setup.

Last question if you dont mind, other than just enabling the spanning tree function (STP) on all the switch's do i need to need to change any of the other setting such as costs etc.

Thanks for great support.

roger

[Matt Hobbs]

Hi Roger,

The only other thing you would want to do is set the spanning-tree priority on the 2824's. In this instance you want one of them to be the root switch, and the other to be the backup.

So, on one you could set 'spanning-tree priority 1' and the other 'spanning-tree priority 2'.

By default they're all set to priority 8. You can leave the 2524's at this setting.

For everything else, spanning-tree will automatically prefer gigabit links over 10/100 links and trunks over single links.

Matt

[rogerp_1]

Matt,

Thanks for the quick response again.

However some one has just informed me that one of the 2824 switchâ s will now need to be installed away from the rest of the switches upstairs in the actual Server room, this is because the server room has only two network points connecting down into the comms rooms where the all of the other switches will be installed. Would you please please quickly go over the diagram again and let me know what you would suggest now.

Thanks again.

Roger

[Matt Hobbs]

Hi Roger,

I've attached 2 new design options. One uses your existing hardware, the other requires more 1000-T transceivers for the 2524's.

In option 1, traffic will flow through the gigabit links and will provide 100 Mbit backup.

Option 2 will provide gigabit redundancy.

Matt

PS. Don't forget to assign points to responses that have helped you!

[rogerp_1]

Great to option 1,

The company does not wish to buy any more equipment so no to option 2, but saying that thanks as its good knowlege.

Anyhow here we go again.

The BOSS man has now given us another port as he is getting rid of the Phone in the server room, this means we now have 3 cat 5 network points.

So looking at the Option 1, shall i stick to it but add another gb link to the 2824 and make it part of a Trunk (making it a 2g link to the other 2824) and also leaving the 100mb link to the other 2524 for backup.

is this right?

Can you please do us a quick diagram if iam correct, if not correct me.

P.S, did u get the points, i think i added them correctly.

[Matt Hobbs]

That's exactly would I'd do, add another link between the 2824's and make sure they're set to be a trunk (otherwise spanning-tree will block one).

Updated diagram attached.

Not sure about the points but it doesn't look like they've been assigned, don't worry about it.

Matt