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

Drew Weaver drew.weaver at thenap.com
Fri May 17 09:42:58 EDT 2013 

Since you guys are talking about it anyway I figured I would chime in and ask a question I had about the N5K.

If you just buy a new or even used 5548P does it come with the functionality to do MCT/vPC or is that an additional license (just purely for L2)?

 Thanks,
-Drew


-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-nsp [mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Oliver Garraux
Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2013 4:54 PM
To: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Nexus 5548 Questions and experiences...

Twinax-wise we've had a few issues with active twinax cables.  The NIC's on some storage hosts (Isilon IIRC) didn't work well with active twinax cables.  We've used Panduit passive twinax cables w/o issue.  I think Panduit sells up to a 7m passive cable, whereas Cisco only sells passive up to 5m.

Also - there are some restrictions on ISSU on the 5k that might bite you.
 I think as someone already mentioned it doesn't do ISSU if you're using L3.  Personally I'd try to avoid doing L3 on a N5k if possible.

Oliver

-------------------------------------

Oliver Garraux
Check out my blog:  blog.garraux.net
Follow me on Twitter:  twitter.com/olivergarraux


On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List < blake.mailinglist at pfankuch.me> wrote:

> 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
> 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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