[Gluster-users] Switch recommendations

[David Coulson]

On 1/30/12 9:12 PM, Harald Stürzebecher wrote:
>
> What happens if one switch fails? Can the remaining equipment do some
> useful work until a replacement arrives?
> Depending on the answers it might be better to have two or more
> smaller stackable switches instead of one big switch, even if the big
> one might be cheaper.
Or just run two totally independent switches and either support two 
different L3 networks, or setup bonded interfaces which connected to 
each switch. If you lose a switch, then you can continue to function 
without a service interruption.

> I just looked at the Netgear website and googled for prices:
> Two Netgear GS724TS stackable switches seem to cost nearly the same as
> one GS748TS, both are supposed to have "a 20 Gbps, dual-ring, highly
> redundant stacking bus".

The issue with most stacking switches is that you don't have any real 
redundancy without either doubling up on ports so each server is 
multi-homed into multiple switches, or having to manually move ports off 
a dead switch. Typically with a stacking configuration if you lose the 
'master' switch the whole stack has to reboot which causes an outage.