Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Advice on new Core/Access Switches for Small Non-Profit Foundation

My company is moving locations and I'm still using a Cisco Catalyst 3560-X that I bought in 2011 as the core switch. Only have 5 vlans (user/printer, server, voice, private wifi, public wifi). The Cisco switch handles inter-vlan routing like a champ (full wirespeed), never has been an issue.

I want to move to 10gb connections (I prefer 10gbase-t as that is what I am using now through a Netgear XS716T trunked into the core that my Hyper-V boxes, backup appliance, nas, etc are running on), and have been looking at the SMB versions of the Cisco switches (SX550X-52 specifically).

Has anyone here used these in layer 3 mode with static routing and know if they are able to handle inter-vlan routing at wirespeed? I know they get a lot of hate but the CLI seems to be really close to iOS now and they've at least raised the packet buffers in this particular switch to 10mb.

If not these switches, does anyone have a recommendation of what I should use? Trying to be reasonable with the budget as well. I would spend the money on a Catalyst model if one existed with 48 port 10gbase-t, but unless I am a complete idiot I've looked through the 3650, 3850, 9100-9500 models and can't find one.

I'm not doing anything crazy, VLANS are all just static routing, I use QoS set for DSCP throughout for the voice VLAN traffic, that's about it. I do have old Polycom phones that use Cisco Discovery Protocol to automatically set the Voice VLAN so sticking with Cisco would be most advantageous.

Thanks in advance for any advice or feedback you are kind enough to offer!

My existing tech environment:

My existing core switch is a 48 port gigabit 3560-X. I have two other 48 port gigabit 3560-X switches with PoE+ for phone/desktop connectivity. I need to replace all three switches as I move to a new location.



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