[c-nsp] Replace 3750 with 3600x

[Reuben Farrelly]

On 7/07/2012 11:45 AM, Dan Letkeman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Looking at replacing a 3750G-12S-12 with an ME-3600X-24FS-M.  I have
> never used or seen a 3600x, and I was wondering for the basic switch
> services does it have the same command line options.  Just doing dot1q
> trunking, maybe some qos marking, rstp, eigrp, etherchannel, and some
> simple ipv4 acls.
>
> Thanks to anyone who can comment.

Yes, generally speaking the same command line options apply.  It's still 
15.S IOS code in both.

However note that the hardware between the 3750G and 3600X is totally 
and completely different though (the ME3600X hardware is much much 
better).  The software follows different trains too but like most IOS it 
still has more or less the same command line options.

Notable points/things that you may run into:

- No VTP (although I'd never use VTP in an SP environment anyway so 
that's not a bad thing)

- VLAN interfaces and trunk ports can be configured the same as a normal 
enterprise switch if you want to, however you will gain a lot of very 
cool flexibility by configuring your trunks/customer facing ports using 
EVC's instead.  So take the plunge and set things up the EVC way where 
possible from day dot, as it'll allow you to take advantage of many of 
the metro ethernet edge features that this platform has to offer that 
you don't get on a switch like the 3750G.  Plus it'll give you 
per-service-instance counters.  The VLAN interface counters on this 
platform don't populate with the total traffic flow (same as the 3750G), 
but the service instances /do/ have counters which allow per-vlan and in 
turn per-EVC graphs to be generated.
QoS and ACLs can be applied on EVCs as well.

- From memory the units do not ship with any power supplies.  Check 
before you place the order :-)

But otherwise, everything you've listed is easily do-able and shouldn't 
present any problems, and you should be able to copy and paste config 
across between the two units with few surprises.

Having run these switches for over a year now in production, I really 
like them and I wouldn't want to ever go back to making do with 3750s in 
my network core or edge.

Reuben