[AusNOG] Back of envelope II

[Nick Bryant]

> Thanks folks for all the responses.
> 
> Is it possible to do auto fail over redundant switching and what if
> anything
> in the Cisco range would do it?
> 
> I remember using a dual cisco catalyst, but you ended up with a pair of
> tails, 1 from each catalyst, with a heart beat connecting the two
> catalysts
> together. Has the state moved on to allow you to have transparent (to
> the
> connected hosts) redundant switching?
> 

For the servers you can use NIC teaming, I think Intel's adapters use
something called SFT (switch fault tolerance) which allows one NIC to be run
into two switches.

Servers are generally (I feel some switch failures coming on) less reliable
than switches though so, given moving a cable from a dead switch to a
working one takes a few mins, you probably should be more concerned about
having two or more servers. Then just plug them into different switches and
have redundancy at the application/OS level. 

What the hell, buy the Cisco 7201, get a SAN and run VMware infrastructure
across your server platform. The economy needs you! :)