[c-nsp] Replace 3750 with 3600x

[Dan Letkeman]

Thanks Reuben, excellent post.

Dan.

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 2:21 AM, Reuben Farrelly
<reuben-cisco-nsp at reub.net> wrote:
> 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
>