Friday, February 16, 2018

Server Farm access layer arquitecture for DELL switches. Stack or MLAG?

Hi gurus,

I'm currently designing the networking in a rack for a small server farm made of 5 servers (just draw 3 on the pic for clarity). https://imgur.com/a/7SNJL

Client has already bought N4032 and have to use them, so maybe some of you had experience with similar equipment, or has another view of how to set up this design.

I see so far two possible options:

- Option 1 (stacking):

Dell Switches interconnected with Stacking.

Server NICs on LACP to each of the switches.

Pros:

-Easy to set up.

-Switches operate as a single unit to manage.

-Quick failover? Still need to test it, don't know how it will behave if just a link is failing, not the whole switch for failing over.

-It will simply work.

Cons:

-Disruptive firmware update (updating firmware reboots both switches at the same time)

-No load balancing, or active/active links.

Option 2 (MLAG):

Dell Switches interconnected with MLAG.

Server NICs on LACP to each of the switches. (is this correct, will LACP work?)

Pros:

  • Both switches operate as a single switch.

  • Separate control panels.

  • Active/Active links, yeah!

Cons:

  • Never have set it up, so don't know really how is working in real life.

  • How to connect the servers to the Switches, just a LACP group with two nics on the server, to another LACP group in each port of the switches?

  • Not so tested? Don't know about this.

Hope someone already had a go with this and can enlight me a bit as I'm quite undecissed. Many thanks folks! :)



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