On May 24, 2006, at 3:27 PM, Tracy R Reed wrote:
We currently have crappy switches and we need to buy some more. I need a few 24 port switches that are managed, can do snmp, port mirroring (ie. to run an IDS like snort), fast backplane, vlan, etc. Some of these will be used for an AoE based SAN so we will want gig-e. Although some of them would probably be ok with 100Mb ports with a gig-e interconnect. Any recommendations? I am sure Cisco has something that would work and it is named by some useless 4 digit number. We would be willing to consider other quality brands as well since the Cisco name usually costs a premium.
The next step down under Cisco on the quality and manageability hierarchy of switch manufacturers is HP with their ProCurve line of switches. You'd be served well by the 28xx series gigabit switches (where xx=24 or 48 depending on your port requirements), and maybe the 26xx series for 100mbit with GigE uplinks.
Beware the Dell switches - they generally work fine individually, but you'll find that their management and feature sets are not consistent across lines and generations. It's fine if you're buying everything at once, but in three years when you need more you may find yourself with a mishmash of quirky switches and configuration files. If Gregory is listening to this thread hopefully he'll share his hellish experience with Dell switches and why he went running and crying back into the arms of HP.
-- Joshua Penix http://www.binarytribe.com Binary Tribe Linux Integration Services & Network Consulting -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
