Re: Switch Questions
- From: "J. Clarke" <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:57:23 -0400
bpanders71@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I manage a small network (75 desktops, 4 servers) with a single HP
> Procurve 4000m switch which has one 1-port gigabit module and the other
> 7 modules having ten 10/100 ports. I've got two HP Proliant DL servers
> with dual gigabit NICS. Obvioulsy, with only one gigabit port, I can
> only hook one of the NICS on one of the servers to it. What I'm
> thinking of doing is purchasing a separate smaller Linksys 16 port
> gigabit switch (under $400) so I can team the dual NICS on both of the
> proliant servers to get 2GB on each.
Read the specs carefully. If you're talking about the SRW2016, there's no
mention of either 802.3ad or Fast Etherchannel, and I can't imagine a Cisco
product supporting any other variant of aggregation if it doesn't support
those.
> FWIW, the two servers are a
> terminal server which hosts about 15-20 users (currently dual NIC'd at
> 200 Mbps), and our main database/file/print server (only one NIC at
> 1GBps) which sees some pretty heavy use. Both are win2k.
Are you looking for performance or fault tolerance?
If you're looking for performance, the first thing to consider is that
you're still only going to have a 1 Gb pipe from the second switch into the
Procurve, so unless you're encountering high traffic between servers you're
not going to gain anything. You'd at the minimum need to put a second
gigabit port in the Procurve.
Next, Terminal Services can run fine over a dialup line. 20 sessions under
worst case conditions are still getting 5 MB/sec out of 100TX--you're not
going to see much gain giving that server more bandwidth unless there's
something you're not telling us.
Next, what transfer rate do you get out of your file/print/database server
now? Filling even a 1 GB/sec pipe more than momentarily takes an
exceedingly heavy duty server and if it's to be done steady state on disk
access you need rather massive storage system.
If you're going for fault tolerance, then you're back to the single link
between the second switch and the Procurve, so you don't really gain
anything.
If you really want aggregation, you'd do better to put three more gigabit
ports in the Procurve, which will cost you about $1000.
> My questions, therefore, are:
>
> 1) I'm guessing I can plug the Linksys into the Procurve through the
> gigabit port, correct? Should I be using a CAT 6 cable for this or
> will CAT 5e do?
Yes, generally speaking any 1000TX device can be connected to any other in
the manner you describe.
Generally speaking CAT5E is adequate for 1000TX--it was _designed_ for CAT5,
5E nails down some numbers that most existing CAT5 meets but was never
tested for, and one of the gigabit vendors demonstrated at a trade show
that it can run error-free over 8 strands of barbed wire.
If it's not running properly on CAT5E and there's no unusual source of EMI
then something is broken.
> If this is not how I would hook this up, what are the
> options? Should I take the cable coming from the router/firewall and
> plug it into the Linksys, then plug the Procurve into the Linksys?
No reason to use a gigabit port for the router unless you've got an unusual
situation--most small businesses have at most 3 Mb/sec or so access.
> 2) Since the Linksys is a managed switch I could configure Port
> trunking. Is this something that should always be done when setting up
> dual NICS (primary goal is load balancing with lesser emphasis on fault
> tolerance)? I tried port trunking when configuring dual 100 NICS on
> the terminal server, but saw no readily apparent benefit. HP Procurve
> has told me different stories each time I've called them.
No. What you seem to be trying to do is called "aggregation", not
"trunking" (although sometimes aggregation is referred to as trunking for
some reason). If you are looking for load balancing and fault tolerance
then aggregation is what you need to use.
> 3) Will this scenario actually give me noticeable improvements? I
> don't want to invest even a little bit of money if improvements are
> minimal.
Based on what you've said so far it seems unlikely.
> Thanks for any insight into this.
> Brian
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.
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