Network advice needed

[AtW]

AtW I would ignore, as per normal - HP Procurve switches are carp

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/43427

Possible bonus - they probably don't require an expensive Cisco certified person who does not know what the difference between latency and bandwidth.

HTH



P.S. In the last 12 hours our fifty quid Gbit switch dealt with 5 TB of network data sent between servers.

[JoJoGabor]

I agree with Snaw, 100Mb to the desktop. I was talking to one of our Cisco consultants and he told me that Windows cannot use more than 500Mb anyway. There is some limiting factor in the way the network stack is threaded (or something)

[AtW]

I was talking to one of our Cisco consultants and he told me that Windows cannot use more than 500Mb anyway. There is some limiting factor in the way the network stack is threaded (or something)

Bulltulip: I've copied data across network from disk to disk at around 65-70 MBytes/sec effective, the main reason for not going faster was disk write limit on the other end. The only reason I don't do it often is because it is faster to move disks and copy data locally in parallel.

[snaw]

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/43427

Possible bonus - they probably don't require an expensive Cisco certified person who does not know what the difference between latency and bandwidth.

HTH



P.S. In the last 12 hours our fifty quid Gbit switch dealt with 5 TB of network data sent between servers.

So an opinion piece, by a guy writing about HP's pricing should be the basis for making a decision about network technology? Once again you;ve surpassed yourself.

My opinion, after actually using them - they're tulip. Cisco have some decent cometitors in many arenas, but the pro-curve isn't one of them.

I'm a network guy, not a Cisco guy AtW - I'm vendor neutral, just because I'm CCIE doesn't mean I haven't spent many years working with other network kit (You're first assumption and mistake).

Possible negative, to your possible bonus - in 3 years time I can say Cisco will still be around, unlike a lot of these cometitors, and that you're guaranteed to find someone with the skillset to manage them. And at the low end (Which a 200 user install is - inc your wee setup) they generally don't cost all that much.

As an aside, what does volume of data transferred have to do with anything? I can transfer 720Gb of traffic across the backplane of a Catalyst 6500 every second ... it's irrelevent to the design, unless you need that kind of speed and if you're doing it across a network (As opposed to in a switch) then it sounds like you need a SAN.

Really, you're occasionally incredibly ******* clueless. Telling us how much data you're transferring really is quite pathetic.

[AtW]

I'm a network guy, not a Cisco guy AtW - I'm vendor neutral, just because I'm CCIE doesn't mean I haven't spent many years working with other network kit (You're first assumption and mistake).

I don't assume anything.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/pr...8/080527a.html

"According to the analyst firm’s data, ProCurve, the world’s second largest enterprise LAN networking vendor, grew worldwide port shipments by 28.4 percent in the first calendar quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. The industry growth rate for this same period was 7.82 percent."

They are doing all-right, can't see them being that bad - value for money most likely, just the kind of purchase I personally like.

My opinion, after actually using them - they're tulip

What exactly is wrong with them?

Cisco will still be around in 3 years, that's true - I would pay huge premium for this however, and in current climate alternatives should be actively thought - you can justify your earned money by offering less than obvious solution on the basis of what you know about products, even an idiot can "recommend" getting Cisco/Oracle/Sun - smart pro would know value for money alternatives.

[snaw]

I don't assume anything.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/pr...8/080527a.html

"According to the analyst firm’s data, ProCurve, the world’s second largest enterprise LAN networking vendor, grew worldwide port shipments by 28.4 percent in the first calendar quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. The industry growth rate for this same period was 7.82 percent."

They are doing all-right, can't see them being that bad - value for money most likely, just the kind of purchase I personally like.



What exactly is wrong with them?

Cisco will still be around in 3 years, that's true - I would pay huge premium for this however, and in current climate alternatives should be actively thought - you can justify your earned money by offering less than obvious solution on the basis of what you know about products, even an idiot can "recommend" getting Cisco/Oracle/Sun - smart pro would know value for money alternatives.

Of course you're always right AtW. How silly of me to doubt you. I've only been doing this for the last 17 years ...

OK as a product, I thought it was pretty pants, I installed 6 procurves for a client, two of them were faulty (Dodgy ports) and needed replaced, not a great start (OK, maybe it was a glitch, but still left a bad impression). Wasn't massivly impressed by them.

They've got a very small market share in the switching sphere (Cisco has arond 70%, everyone else shares the rest - from memory it's around 10% for HP).

Every one of those others could very well give up on it at some point in the future, not going to see that happen with Cisco. That's kind of important to most companies, of say around 200 users. They're going to shell out a stack of cash for technology they expect to be around for 5/10 years - for a 200 user network you're talking about what - 4 2960 switches and a couple of 3750's aggregtion switches - £10k on hardware with a Cisco solution, even if you save 25% of that, is that really worth it?

If you're talking bigger, then I've anecdotally that they don't scale well. Their main selling points are cost and lifetime warranty (Though it's not replace, generally it's refurb I believe).

But hey, you'd know best, cause like you transferred 5 TB of data last night.

[AtW]

Every one of those others could very well give up on it at some point in the future, not going to see that happen with Cisco. That's kind of important to most companies, of say around 200 users. They're going to shell out a stack of cash for technology they expect to be around for 5/10 years - for a 200 user network you're talking about what - 4 2960 switches and a couple of 3750's aggregtion switches - £10k on hardware with a Cisco solution, even if you save 25% of that, is that really worth it?

No, 25% saved on this would not be worth it - I'd go Cisco in this case.

But hey, you'd know best, cause like you transferred 5 TB of data last night.

Should be over 10 TB in 24 hours.

[DiscoStu]

No, 25% saved on this would not be worth it - I'd go Cisco in this case.





Should be over 10 TB in 24 hours.

It's been so nice to have you away. Do us all a favour and leave again soon.

[AtW]

It's been so nice to have you away. Do us all a favour and leave again soon.

Why won't you put me on ignore list then? I'll post as often as I deem necessary - you'll be the last person who'd I care to ask whether you like it or not.

[wxman]

Back to the original question …

For 200 users I would def go 1Gb between servers, with 1Gb drop down to 100Mb switches that distribute out to the users etc.

I am not sure what the server requirements are for 200 users? But assuming that they are “normal” IE a couple of file / print servers, email server, SQL server etc then 100mb to the users will be fine.

*If* the network then appears slow then go back to basics – actually time how long a 1Gb file transfer takes between servers and then from the server to the user – try to find the bottle neck.

Sometimes you are better to strap the inter server / switch links to 1000mbs full duplex than allowing them to remain on auto. – file transfer test will prove.

Slow networks are often (blamed) but found not to be the bottleneck – IMO slow server disk subsystems are the culprit – again a file transfer test will help to diagnose.

Look for horrid disk fragmentation (Windows servers) as well as physical disk read / writes – there are some really slow SCSI U320 disk out there believe me.

Is the server running a disk array, if so is the RAID controller set up for write through or write back?

Run a performance bench mark http://www.passmark.com/ on the server disk read writes - are they as expected.NB C: drives on windows servers are deliberately slowed down for disk writes (protection against power fail), D Drive is not so expect better read / write.

If the servers can serve up! as expected then look again at the basics.

I just “fixed” a slow 300 user network by replacing the cables used to patch the servers running at 1Gb with certified CAT6 patch leads – but here there were lots of errors reported on the switches with often server network dropouts. I was the second contractor in after the first one failed to spot the dodgy leads.