RooDBwoY
join:2004-02-19
England
1 edit | Complete infrastructure overhaul!
Afternoon all.
Myself and my collague work for a medium-sized law firm in the UK and have been presented with the huge task of overhauling the entire IT infrastructure. This will include core and data room switching, all of the servers, all workstations, both internet lines and any structure wiring necessary.
Outline of the project is this:
HP BladeSystem servers
VMware ESXi/VC Server
HP StorageWorks Fiber Channel SAN
HP ProCurve Networking
HP DC9700 ultra-small desktop workstations.
Noticing a pattern here? 
So far we've completed the ProCurve stuff and it's working beautifully with no downtime at all during the process.
Next week the BladeSystem gear arrives so we'll be hard at it creating virtual machine and migrating our roles onto the new gear.
Lots of 10Gbit fiber and 10Gbit ethernet floating around the building now!
As per the usual blog routine, start at the bottom post and work your way up.
»whrefresh.blogspot.com/
Enjoy and please post comments/suggestions.
Oh, the cabling is routed temporarily. A proper tidy up will be completed after it's all finalised.
James. |
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TomS_
debugger it
Premium,MVM
join:2002-07-19
Australia
4 edits | Re: Complete infratrsucture overhaul!
One immediate suggestion I would make is to ditch the spanning tree idea over the two 10gbit links, and form a port/etherchannel instead. With spanning tree in the mix you only have 10gig in play with 10gig on standby, so not really 20gig as you say.
Port/etherchannel will combine them into a 20gig full duplex link, and if one link fails it simply falls back to 10gig full duplex. Different to above in that it is 20gig in play with the worst case scenario being that you drop 50% if there is a link failure.
It achieves much the same effect as the STP based idea you already have though.
You could use PVST and run different VLANs over different 10gig links, but port/etherchannel is much nicer IMO.
Other than that, whats wrong with HP gear? 
Seriously nice looking setup youve got going now. Dare I say it without sounding too wierd: sexy!
And some reasonably artistic photos too. |
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RooDBwoY
join:2004-02-19
England
| ah, that little lot didn't even accur to me. i will have a look at the configs of the core switches over the next couple of weeks and see if that is something we can enable. cheers for the advice.
the config we have at the moment is the suggestion of our consultants so obviously can be changed when we deem fit as a firm.
cheers, it's a decent camera, especially with the fixed 50mm F1.4 lens on but i'm still learning photography and took them all in a rush. got some really nice snaps of non-geek gear that really show it off
cheers for the comments! |
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jbcg llc
@norlight.net
| reply to RooDBwoY
Re: Complete infrastructure overhaul!
Geez, you guys do tidier temporary work than a lot of consulting companies I've see do "final" work.
Is the company name really Wright Hassall? Hmmm . . . sounds like Dunder Mifflin. 
Just kidding of course. Thanks for posting this link.
Joey |
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CanerisErik
Caneris
Premium,VIP
join:2007-10-03
Toronto, ON | reply to RooDBwoY
Most places I've worked at, you'd be shot for blogging such a level of detail |
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RooDBwoY
join:2004-02-19
England | yeah, we're really called Wright Hassall, what a great name for a firm of lawyers huh?
it's updated now with pics of the blade enclosures etc. |
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boethius
Boo-Yah
Premium
join:2002-01-28
Winters, CA
clubs: | Just curious - why did you use 2xc3000 chassis and not just 1xc7000 series chassis? |
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JoelC707
join:2002-07-09
Tucson, AZ
clubs:
| I was wondering that too. I've only come up with one explanation so far. In the extreme and very unlikely event the entire enclosure craps out they still have free bays in the other and can swap them over. It's essentially another layer of redundancy. Though he would still be one bay short. Also I only briefly looked into the HP blade offerings but IIRC, the C7000 had different power requirements, something they may not have had available. |
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RooDBwoY
join:2004-02-19
England
| sorry guys, been crazily busy with this project.
yes, we went for 2 x 3000 enclosures as we wanted another layer of redundancy for the servers. so far the HP equipment is very very nice to work with. reliable and mega configurable.
and yes, the c3000 enclosures operate on standard 240v connections but the c7000 enclosures require commando-style sockets for extra juice. we didn't see the point in having that spec for a 200 user environment though.
although we have more than enough connectivity to do it, the sockets are all there suitable for c7000s as we bought the building from a large bank after they moved elsewhere. |
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mike12806
Premium
join:2007-08-28
Milton, MA | reply to RooDBwoY
Wait so you're running all this equipment on a 10 Mb WAN connection?? That seems odd to me! |
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JoelC707
join:2002-07-09
Tucson, AZ
clubs:
| They're a law firm. Chances are most of their needs are internal which is the reason for gigabit and 10 gigabit everywhere. Sure they still need to send out and receive documents but I'd be willing to bet 10 meg is enough. Especially considering they might not have time during the day to goof off and surf the web. |
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MaxCras
join:2008-09-19
Mount Clemens, MI | Exactly, and if they digitize all of their paperwork, throwing 100+ page PDF's around goes a bit smoother on GigE |
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mike12806
Premium
join:2007-08-28
Milton, MA | reply to JoelC707
Yeah, I just guess I figured with most standard home broadband connections falling in the 5-15 Mbit range it seemed a little low! Esp. for 200 end-users. |
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JoelC707
join:2002-07-09
Tucson, AZ
clubs: | Yeah I agree it is a bit low for "normal" usage but I suspect they don't use the internet there that much or at least not that many of them. |
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