[c-nsp] Nexus 5548 Questions and experiences...

Thu May 16 16:41:41 EDT 2013

Sorry for the doubletap, but to clarify with the routed interfaces question, those would be going to n2k's attached to a layer 3 nexus 7k.

Thanks,
Blake

From: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:34 PM
To: Scott Voll; Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: RE: [c-nsp] Nexus 5548 Questions and experiences...

Scott,
                Great question on the Layer 3.  This literally a Layer 2 DR network with a /21 internally for a small subset of our primary datacenter.  Very limited Layer 3 (4 /28's or smaller totaling 11 devices), which is all handled by our HA firewall and inter-datacenter WAN Routers (through the firewall).  Firewall is 10gbit, and will handle that traffic without a problem.  This is a 3 rack environment currently holding a 4900M and a 3560G.  I need 4 ports of 10gbit SR, 10 ports of non-overcommitted 10gbase-t and 40 ports of 1gbase-t.  Storage lives on its own dedicated fabric (for now) and will not be on Nexus for a number of years.  Next year I will add a second 5548UP and properly multihome the FEX and HA firewalls.  The only reason this environment is going Nexus is due to space constraints (colo) and the need for 10gbit fiber, copper and CX1, otherwise the existing 4900M or a small 4500E would have been perfectly fine.

Vendor bit us on this one as they don't know how to pick a standard...  The moral of the story is, never let your DBA team purchase their own equipment.  Also don't listen to Oracle sales monkeys.  They lie.

I did know about the BPDU guard implementation on the N2k devices.  I do have a question regarding other types of links... Any experience with routers?  I have a pretty big handful of T1/MPLS/DS3/OC3/Voice routers ranging from 1700 to 7206 which I was thinking might have to go into a non n2k platform when we do our primary datacenter next year.  Do these devices that do not speak spanning tree function as expected on the 2k's?

What about Routed interfaces?  I have 2 (soon to be 3) WAN links that are terminated within our primary datacenter 6509's as routed interfaces.  I am assuming that they need to be on a non n2k platform as well?

Thanks,
Blake

From: Scott Voll [mailto:svoll.voip at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:58 AM
To: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Nexus 5548 Questions and experiences...

We have just started our move from a 4506E to a set of 5548's.  NXOS is a little different from IOS.  Learn the vPC, and such will be a good thing.  as someone already stated, having one is not the best design.  With all the 10 Gig stuff running, what are you going to use for layer 3?

we went with the 5548's, but there are some design considerations to be made.  my understanding is you can't do a Non interrupting upgrade.  Was not my plan originally, and makes upgrades more of a problem (especailly with Storage running through them also), thus I'm back to what ever you install will be on it until we by new hardware.  Thus we went with the 5.2 flavor, having been burned on .0 stuff way to often.

we have a Cisco Blade chassis with multiple blades.  very happy with the TwinAX cables.  So long as you get the right sizes.  I don't like looping them a bunch.  But it's hard to order before you get them in, with out knowing were everything will be racked.

also another note, you will not want to place any IOS switches hanging off the 2k's.  They don't support Spanning tree and will error disable your port.  Wish I would have known that before buying a 5548.  Might have went bigger.

YMMV

Scott

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 7:35 AM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <blake.mailinglist at pfankuch.me<mailto:blake.mailinglist at pfankuch.me>> wrote:
Within the next week I will be starting my first dive into Nexus.  I have read the Cisco Press book for nexus, however its primarily focused on 4.x not 5.x and 6.x.

I am looking for some real world feedback, including some of the gotchas people have found in existing deployments.  Really this will be a small deployment, a single 5548 for now and a couple 2232TM-E and 2224TP for fabric extenders.  What has been the experience using TwinAX cables to uplink to servers?  Cisco Twinax cables working only or have people been able to use HP/Sun/Dell provided cables with luck?  What's the experience with the Nexus B22 blade chassis FEX?

OS suggestions?  Again this is going to be a new deployment, and its going into an environment that is not upgraded heavily.  As an example I have moved some devices off 12.2 (20) or earlier in the past few weeks.

Thanks,

Blake
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