Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Company Acquisition - New Network Approach

Howdy!

The company I work for recently acquired another company of equal size. I've been spending time on their network over the past few weeks and have been in awe with just how scattered and cobblestoned together their network is. They are a small office with 150 employees.

For equipment they've got a Fortigate firewall, C3650 for a core, and a handful of SG-300s for access. After seeing some spanning tree issues I requested some new network gear to replace theirs, and while my firewall suggestion was shot down, I got everything else I requested, so I feel good about that; FTD 2100s for firewall, Silver Peak Edge Connects for SD-WAN, 2 Catalyst 9500s for cores, and catalyst 3850s for access.

Looking through some of cisco's validated designs I felt this set us up in a pretty good spot for future expansion. Is there a deeper look at the device configs that they are referencing in the CVD guides? I see a lot of big picture things, and a few interface settings, but would really like a little more meat with these potatoes.

Lastly, my plan is to setup all the new network gear in parallel and establish connectivity through their current network, and migrate 1 system at a time over to the new gear while re-addressing and physically cabling (I'm also having their IP scheme re-done as it is all over the map currently). This is the part that has me stressed the most. I haven't done a cutover like this before, so I wanted some input from anyone who has and could provide guidance. My systems guys seem pretty confident on their part, but this is the only part of my plan that I'm not nearly as confident about.

Thanks in advance!



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