Switch Questions
I manage a small network (75 desktops, 4 servers) with a single HP Procurve 4000m switch which has one 1-port gigabit module and the other
7 modules having ten 10/100 ports. I've got two HP Proliant DL servers with dual gigabit NICS. Obvioulsy, with only one gigabit port, I can only hook one of the NICS on one of the servers to it. What I'm thinking of doing is purchasing a separate smaller Linksys 16 port gigabit switch (under $400) so I can team the dual NICS on both of the proliant servers to get 2GB on each. FWIW, the two servers are a terminal server which hosts about 15-20 users (currently dual NIC'd at 200 Mbps), and our main database/file/print server (only one NIC at 1GBps) which sees some pretty heavy use. Both are win2k.My questions, therefore, are:
1) I'm guessing I can plug the Linksys into the Procurve through the gigabit port, correct? Should I be using a CAT 6 cable for this or will CAT 5e do? If this is not how I would hook this up, what are the options? Should I take the cable coming from the router/firewall and plug it into the Linksys, then plug the Procurve into the Linksys?2) Since the Linksys is a managed switch I could configure Port trunking. Is this something that should always be done when setting up dual NICS (primary goal is load balancing with lesser emphasis on fault tolerance)? I tried port trunking when configuring dual 100 NICS on the terminal server, but saw no readily apparent benefit. HP Procurve has told me different stories each time I've called them.
3) Will this scenario actually give me noticeable improvements? I don't want to invest even a little bit of money if improvements are minimal.Thanks for any insight into this. Brian
read more and respond »Posted 5 years ago by bpanders71 in Ethernet LAN
