Recommendation for new Core switch

[sengy01]

Dear all,

  We are currently HP networking customer with all HP switches in the officies. The Core switch in the Data Centre is Procurve 2900. Servers are in vSphere 5.1 + HP Blade + virtual Connect + CX 4 cables to the core switch.

  The configurtion ran well for a few years until recently 2 cases happen to our network.

1. Exchange 2010 upgrade - We have Windows exch NLB running with multicase in the vSphere. It wouldn't work in the first place as the Procurve 2900 doesn't support static arp. Eventually we did the statis arp in our of the Cisco router as work around solution. Although it is working fine, we do notice high volume of broadcast traffic in our networking, most of them is exch NLB traffic. We can only leave it as it is for that time until we obtained budget for switches refreshment.

2. vSphere vm guest OS restoration problem - We are using Symantec BE for VM backup. During the trial VM restoration, our network was seriously affected by having a lot of packet and high collission. A lof of equipment was affected. The workaround solution was to adjust MTU of ESX vKernel NIC to higher value. After the workaround, we do see singnificant improvement. However users still feel slowness during the restoration process. The restoration also get slower.

 We hope that new core switch to be purchase can resolve above issues. For the reason we wish to seek for your advise for Procurve stacking switch models. We do not prefer to use 3Com or H3C models as we had a lot of issues with them before.

Other features -

1. We wish to do routing with the core switch in the future and hope the performance will be in pal with Cisco 3750-x

2. Switch with CX4 connectivity so that we don't need to purchase 10Gb SFP for our Blade.

3. POE, redudent PS is not required.

4. Sflow is a must for monitoring.

5. STP, LACP, LLCP is a must

6. "Please advise any good feature that can value add to my network"

thousand thanks in advance

[n3tm1n]

Hi,

If you are looking at the Procurve/provision based HP switches and need CX4 capablilites, you could look at the following switches:

HP 5400 (5406/5412) and purchased necessary modules that include CX4 ports. (v2 modules recommended)

HP 82xx series (54xx bigger brother)

Both switches above include Premium license for advanced Layer 3 features (VRRP, OSPF, etc)

HP 3500yl this model supports POE/+ if a 48 Port switch is need with all ports POE enabled, a redundant power supply is needed.

The 3500yl has an optional module for the backplane you can purchase that has 10Gb CX4  ports

Premium licenses is required and may be a seperate purchase should you need advanced layer 3 features

If you did have SPF+ i would have suggested the 6600 switch.

You still cannot add static arp info on these switches but to overcome that, the command: "ip arp-mcast-replies" will solve/addreess the MCast NLB issue (k14.65 or greater firmware)

Bonus is that the above switches listed use that same firmware. Meaning, you don't need to down 3 different types of firmware for the different models.

If you had 10Gb RJ45 connections, I would recommend the 3800 switch. It's a great switch, but the switches listed above are great as well.

We use the 6600(s) for cores, and 3500(s), 5406 for the Edge/Access point. 3800 in another environment.

These switches in my view a very under-rated!

All switches listed above can also support the other features you listed.

For LACP, you can also implement distributed trunking(LACP) for increased redundancy if you have multiple switches (procurve)

[n3tm1n]

Another good resource is the switch selector. "http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/networking/products/switches/selector/index.aspx#tab=TAB3"

Hope that helps.

[sengy01]

Dear Proteck,
Thousand thanks for the quick response and recommendation. Does the "ip arp-mcast-replies" eliminate broadcast traffic cause by NLB? Because I heard some friend say, the feature will allow NLB Multicast to function but the traffic is still be broadcast traffic. For the reason, I wish to confirm before purchase.

As for my case 2, do you think it is due to switch limitation? If yes does 3500 has the capability to resolve the problem?

thanks a lot

[MichaelM55]

Stop, please. Sorry guys, we live in year 2013 and HP aquired H3C/3Com years ago, so please stop suggesting HP "Procurve OS" based 3800/3500/6200/5400/8200 switching series for core. Therefore HP has now the exH3C/3Com "Comware OS" based devices.

The "smallest" and still up to date core switch I´d recommend nowadays is the HP HP 5800-24G-SFP Switch (JC103A) with two power supplies. In terms of software features, the A5800 has:

- dynamic routing with Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
- OSPFv2 incl. MD5 authentication
- OSPFv3 incl. IPSec authentication
- GRE tunneling
- BGP (IPv4)
- BGP (IPv6)
- ISIS (IPv4)
- ISIS (IPv6)
- MPLS
- VPLS
- Virtual Routing instances with IPv4 unicast and multicast support
- Virtual Routing instances with IPv6 unicast and multicast support
- ...

(That´s only a high level overview, for detauls look at the current release notes: https://h10145.www1.hp.com/downloads/SoftwareReleases.aspx?ProductNumber=JC103A and configuration guides: http://www.h3c.com/portal/Technical_Support___Documents/Technical_Documents/Switches/H3C_S5800_Series_Switches/ and ask your HP presales representative  about what you want to do with the device BEFORE you buy the switch.

• For Microsoft NLB support, take a look at http://www.h3c.com/portal/download.do?id=1492490

• Besides its 24x SFP + 4x SFP+ slots you can also  add CX4 module. Also if needed, you can stack up to 9 of these together Update: My fault it seems the 5800 series doesn´t have any CX4 support any more,

So take a look at the A5500-HI series, which is cheaper that A5800 series, but also has less features, e.g. it doesn´t have "- Virtual Routing instances with IPv6 multicast support" (A5800 has a compressed firmware size of ~30MB, A5500-HI has ~20MB). You can find the latest release notes here: https://h10145.www1.hp.com/downloads/SoftwareReleases.aspx?ProductNumber=JG543A

[n3tm1n]

MichaelM55,

Thanks for the post on why the H3C/3Com products should be used over the ProVision based switches. I was answering the OP question they inquired about. Since the OP had a bad experience with H3C/3Com products in the past and wasn't really interested in those products, I provided him with what I thought would be great alternatives.

The OP may work at a company where budget is limited and paying marked up prices on the H3C/3Com gear may not get approval. Also, the poster may not have a complicated/messy network and doesn't need all the additional bells and features those switches provide.

No arguments here, just answering the post.

Now... as to if ip-arp-mcast replies still broadcasts to all ports on the switch, I do not know. Perhaps someone from HP support or some other forum member can answer that.

[Vince_Whirlwind]

The OP clearly stated he wanted to stick with Procurve. I understand that. Procurve is cheap and easy to manage.

If you're going to switch to a different product, you're going to need to retrain your staff and re-write procedures.
In that case, you would need to assess the alternatives rather than automatically start buying H3C.

[Thomas_Roes]

If considering the 8200/5400 series, consider the backplane speed. non-v2 modules have 2 14,4Gbps backplane connections. v2 modules on the 8200 series have two 23,4Gbps backplane connections.
Using the 8 port 10Gbps module, you have a potential bottleneck.

(But I still LOVE the LT warrenty on the Procurve series. It save a lot of money.)