Cisco Catalyst 4500 series
Cisco 4000/4500 Classic Series vs 4500E Series.
Recently we had a client looking for an affordably priced switch that had all SFP+ with 10Gbase uplinks.
On a regular basis with other vendors, we have seen the Cisco 4500E become the recommended path. The Cisco 4500E is a great option and would certainly cover these needs, but they can be expensive.
An alternative and cheaper compromise could be the 4000/4500 Classic series.
The concern with this route becomes “Why do I want to put 48 GBPS of ports in a slot that will max out at 6 GBPS?”
The answer is that most non-server ports really don’t end up using that much bandwidth and 6 GBPS for each blade is often sufficient, and was so in the case of this client.
To future-proof this solution, if this turns out not to be enough bandwidth in the future, it’s a pretty painless upgrade to the E chassis. You’ll need a newer supervisor, but the old power supplies will likely be re-usable.
In this situation, we went with the 4507R a WS-X4448-GB-SFP blade and a redundant pair of Catalyst 4500 Series Supervisor Engine IVs.
The customer has the bandwidth she needed and she saved some money in the process with a full path to upgradability.
Maximum Midrange Computer Specialists
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