Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuture Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuture?atomcommentsDWiki2011-05-17T23:00:37ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuture.From 70.30.137.42 on /blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuturetag:CSpace:blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuture:8de12e88394f8f17ecb79a0f7fc2265c78c2343aFrom 70.30.137.42<div class="wikitext"><p>A similar thing exists on some of the products from Extreme Networks. They call it SummitStack:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.extremenetworks.com/solutions/summit-stack.aspx">http://www.extremenetworks.com/solutions/summit-stack.aspx</a> <br>
<a href="http://www.extremenetworks.com/products/summit-x650.aspx">http://www.extremenetworks.com/products/summit-x650.aspx</a></p>
<p>Again, you can start with one unit and expand as you have budget to help reduce single points of failure if that's a priority.</p>
</div>2011-05-17T23:00:37ZFrom 70.30.137.42 on /blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuturetag:CSpace:blog/tech/Our10GImmediateFuture:3266559e2c45d1d779c6a6065dad20a9123b128eFrom 70.30.137.42<div class="wikitext"><p>You state:</p>
<blockquote><p>The core of our physical network is a set of switches chained together through pairs of 10G ports (each switch has two). This is an increasingly awkward architecture as time goes by (for reasons beyond the scope of this entry). We would love to move to a star model where there is a central 10G switch that all of the core switches uplink to; at this point even a four-port 10G switch would give us a useful simplification of the topology.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Having one switch in the core of your network is tempting fate to a certain extent as it is a single point of failure. :)</p>
<p>One product you may want to check out is the Juniper EX4500: it has forty 10 GigE SFP connections. While not cheap-cheap, it can get you started on a star topology. Of course ideally you don't want a single switch, so if you get a second (now or at a later date) you can chain them together in a "Virtual Chasis" system so that they appear as one switch to other devices:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/switching/ex-series/ex4500/">http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/switching/ex-series/ex4500/</a></p>
<p>You then have your other switches connect one uplink port to one of the (physical) EX4500s, and the other uplink port to the second physical EX4500: if one has hardware issues the other should still be fine (hopefully it's in the next rack or two over). You can then also use link aggregation (802.3ad) on the two uplinks since they're connecting to a single (virtual) switch to help increase bandwidth bandwidth. Similarly for any file servers that you may connect via 10 GigE: dual connections, one to each physical unit to help in redundancy and spread the load.</p>
<p>Of course if there's a software problem using the two virtually-link switches then it could still cause an issue, but one way around it could be simply powering down one of the physical chassises while the problem is sorted out.</p>
<p>I'm sure other manufacturers have simply virtual chassis technologies, but I'm not sure if they're available on units that are as inexpensive (relatively speaking) as the EX4500.</p>
</div>2011-05-17T22:54:03Z