Presales advice needed

[chicocouk]

I've been asked to find a couple of 24 port cisco switches that can be chained together and treated as if they were a single switch, and which also support vlans.

The idea is that we'll have two nokia firewalls off them, in an HA pair, so if either the firewall or one of the switches goes down, there's still resiliance there.

The million dollar question is, what (new) cisco 100meg 24 port switches would let you do it? My cisco switch knowledge isn't the greatest and I'm wary of missing something important.

Someone has mentioned the 2900 series are "fixed config", is that the case, and if so, what does that mean exactly?

Any help much appreciated

Thanks


CCNA, CCSA, MCSE, Cisco Firewall specialist, VPN specialist, wannabe CCSP

 

[BuckWeet]

Any of the newere switches will let you do this..

2950, 3550, 3650, 3750, etc...

if you only need a layer 2 switch, the 2950's will work just fine..

They can be setup in a management group so you only need 1 IP..

BuckWeet

 

[chicocouk]

Thanks for that. Just to set my mind at rest, does the idea of a "fixed config" ring any alarm bells? I can't find mention of it myself so far

CCNA, CCSA, MCSE, Cisco Firewall specialist, VPN specialist, wannabe CCSP

 

[AJ1982]

Fixed config could mean a config which is saved to the device when its powered off, Cisco call it the Startup Config or Config in NVRAM

Cheers

AJ

===

Fatman Superstar (Andrew James)

CCNA, CCAI

 

[BuckWeet]

Fixed config might also mean that you can't change out any kind of hardware (gbics, expansion modules, etc..)

 

[cryptomap]

Fixed configuration means that it is not a modular switch. ie. you cannot add functionality through supervisor modules, line cards etc like you can in the 4500, 6500 etc.

 

[chicocouk]

That's great, that was where I was trying to get to - Basically they can have the two switches being treated as one big switch if they're on the same vlan, but in terms of redundancy, if one goes down, the other doesn't - which is where we need to be

Thanks for the info about fixed config, that sets my mind at ease.

Thanks everyone!

CCNA, CCSA, MCSE, Cisco Firewall specialist, VPN specialist, wannabe CCSP

 

[baddos]

You mentioned VLANs.... I'd recommend buying two 3750 switches if you have the money. The failover routing and etherchannel across chassis are nice features. Otherwise go with two 3550 switches.