[c-nsp] Migrating Cat3550 to Supervisor II on 6506

[Peter Hicks]

Hello

I have a pair of Cat6506 switches each with a Cat3550-24 switch connected
via a trunk made out of a couple of 100Mb crossovers.  The 3550s are
performing L3 switching between VLANs, and the whole setup's working quite
well.

I'm trying to put a proposal together for replacing the 3550s with
Supervisor II blades, as the 6500s have Sup1A's and run CatOS 5.5(2).  Some
questions:

  1. In business terms, how can I justify putting the routing functionailty
     directly inside the core switches rather than on 3550s?  From a
     technical angle, "It's a lot better" would be enough :-)

  2. I'm looking at a WS-X6K-S2-MSFC2 (Sup2, 2GE + MSFC2/PFC2), but I'm a
     bit confused at to the difference between an MSFC and PFC.  Do I need
     both?  Or just an MSFC?

  3. Will I be able to run IOS natively on the 6506s after upgrading the
     supervisor?  One of the juniors in our team is learning IOS and finding
     CatOS a struggle (as we don't make many changes to the 6500s), and I'd
     like to have IOS everywhere if possible.  Are there any caveats to
     running IOS on the 6506s?

Best wishes,


Peter.