Seeking guidance on upgrading campus network

Hello everyone,

I recently became the decision maker for all things IT in my organization and have started looking into upgrading our campus switching equipment. My desire for focusing part of our limited resources on upgrading our network infrastructure is more or less a gut feeling that things could be better, and therefore I am seeking advice from those more experienced than myself about what to look for. Below is a little background information about our current situation.

Background:

• We are a private school with multiple buildings spread throughout our campus and support around 1,000 users between students and staff
• Older buildings are connected to MDF through Cat5e and often daisy chain off of each other the further out they go.
• Newer buildings are connected to the MDF through fiber
• Current MDF switch is a Cisco Catalyst 4948 that is used to service IDFs and create three VLANs for different geographical areas of campus
• Current IDF switches are mismatched brand and, for all intents and purposes, are unmanaged switches; most being 10/100 speed
• Wifi is Aruba Instant APs, with a virtual controller in each VLAN
• Purpose of the upgrade is to have a consistent and new network infrastructure that will sustain us for the foreseeable future; Minimum 1G between switches with 10G possible.
• We do not currently have any sort of network performance monitoring solutions or anything like that but I would like to in the future and have compatible equipment

With that in mind, I contacted CDW to discuss options and they ultimately suggested Aruba for our replacements. The core switch recommended was a 3810M (JL075A) and IDF switches were 2930F (JL256A#ABA) models. I have heard good things about Aruba and have been very happy with their wireless offerings but have no experience in their wired solutions. As far as other requirements, I am wanting POE to power the access points and other equipment such as phones. Because of the budget and the equipment they are suggesting, this would be a phased replacement happening over a course of three to four years.

If anyone would be willing to share their opinion, I would be very grateful. I’ve tried to keep my post as concise yet detailed as possible but I recognize I may not have included a relevant piece of information, if that’s the case, I would be happy to further expand.

Thank you for your help.