[tech] Machine Room Switch Upgrade - TL;DR

[James Arcus]

I know my previous email was quite long, so I thought I'd just summarize 
the main points here.

  * New switch was installed, is faster and newer and lets us use 10
    Gb/s fibre
  * We now have a 10 Gb/s link from the machine room servers to the rest
    of our network
  * Everything else should be working the same, if it isn't contact me
    or [FVP]
  * Cisco switches are heavy and difficult to lift
  * Lifting them directly up into place, instead of moving them up and
    sideways to the rack from outside it, is much easier

Cheers,

James [MPT]

On 13/7/19 12:29 pm, James Arcus wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I'm pleased to say that the Cisco switch chassis/supervisor upgrade on 
> Friday was successful. We are now running a Cisco Catalyst 4506-E with 
> supervisor 6-E and the latest firmware in place of the previous 4507R 
> with supervisor IV. The new switch is named Kerosene and increases 
> throughput per line card from 6 Gb/s to 24 Gb/s with the option of 48 
> Gb/s with the same chassis in the future. It also adds 10G capability 
> and the ability to run the latest software version.
>
> Kerosene is set up nearly identical to Bitumen save for a few things:
>
>   * A different management IP that is in DNS
>   * The 2xGbE LACP link from Bitumen to Walnut has been replaced with
>     10G SR fibre
>   * The connections to Bitumen's 2 24-port line cards have been moved
>     onto a 48-port line card
>   * Updated rommon firmware and Cisco iOS
>
> The ports have been minimally rearranged to fit the new line cards. 
> Essentially, both switches physically consist of 4 rows of 24 ports, 
> and the row/column position of each connection has been maintained. 
> This is also the tagging system that was used when labelling the ends 
> of the patch leads during the move. As the 48-port line card numbers 
> ports in top/bottom pairs first (i.e. port 2 is the first port on the 
> bottom row, not the second port on the top row), the interfaces in the 
> switch configuration had to be renumbered appropriately.
>
> The configs of both Walnut and Kerosene were also altered to use the 
> same settings for the 10G link as were previously applied to the 
> copper pair. (Failing to remember to change Walnut as well was the 
> source of the initial failure for the network to come back up.)
>
> Just a final note on the physical removal/installation of the 
> switches: they are very heavy, definitely at least a two-person job. 
> For future reference, we found that moving the patch panel underneath 
> the switch out of the way allowed lifting it directly up into position 
> while mounting, which was much easier.
>
> Thanks to [FVP] and [DAS] for their effort and help.
>
> If anyone has further questions about the process, don't hesitate to 
> reply.
>
> Cheers,
>
> James Arcus [MPT]
>
>
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