So whats everyone using for switching and servers?

[jayst136]

i'm looking at Netgear 10Gbit switches as well. Specs seem good enough regarding buffers and latency, all at a very reasonable price.

M7100 | Fully Managed Switches | Switches | Business | NETGEAR

I would only use them for L2 iSCSI traffic. Would not put them in core or let them provide any L3 services.

I'm very happy with Dell R630 and R730 servers ath the moment.

[lindy37]

Cisco 5548's for LAN and iSCSI

Dell R630's for VMware 6.x hosts.  Each host has 4 - 10gig ports (Intel X520-2?) 2 for LAN, 2 for iSCSI.  We run Jumbo Frames on the hosts/vmware and switches (preferred send/receive).  Nimble CS300 10gig, Jumbo on.

[chris24]

It really doesn't matter what switches they are providing they adhere to one rule - they have sufficient buffer cache to handle the throughput. You will know when it's an issue as a performance test will result in a saw blade graph where the cache becomes saturated. Re-transmits and high pause frame count are also indications of this saturation.

Aim for =>512kb per port, most vendors however share one pool across all the ports! It is for this reason that stacking switches is bad news as any inter switch link (ISL) traffic will consume this cache also, this highlights the importance of ensuring you isolate your paths via different subnets or event & odd or bisect.

All switch vendors publish these stats, if they don't - don't buy the switch.