[tech] Machine Room Switch Upgrade

[James Arcus]

Hi All,

I'm pleased to say that the Cisco switch chassis/supervisor upgrade on 
Friday was successful. We are now running a Cisco Catalyst 4506-E with 
supervisor 6-E and the latest firmware in place of the previous 4507R 
with supervisor IV. The new switch is named Kerosene and increases 
throughput per line card from 6 Gb/s to 24 Gb/s with the option of 48 
Gb/s with the same chassis in the future. It also adds 10G capability 
and the ability to run the latest software version.

Kerosene is set up nearly identical to Bitumen save for a few things:

  * A different management IP that is in DNS
  * The 2xGbE LACP link from Bitumen to Walnut has been replaced with
    10G SR fibre
  * The connections to Bitumen's 2 24-port line cards have been moved
    onto a 48-port line card
  * Updated rommon firmware and Cisco iOS

The ports have been minimally rearranged to fit the new line cards. 
Essentially, both switches physically consist of 4 rows of 24 ports, and 
the row/column position of each connection has been maintained. This is 
also the tagging system that was used when labelling the ends of the 
patch leads during the move. As the 48-port line card numbers ports in 
top/bottom pairs first (i.e. port 2 is the first port on the bottom row, 
not the second port on the top row), the interfaces in the switch 
configuration had to be renumbered appropriately.

The configs of both Walnut and Kerosene were also altered to use the 
same settings for the 10G link as were previously applied to the copper 
pair. (Failing to remember to change Walnut as well was the source of 
the initial failure for the network to come back up.)

Just a final note on the physical removal/installation of the switches: 
they are very heavy, definitely at least a two-person job. For future 
reference, we found that moving the patch panel underneath the switch 
out of the way allowed lifting it directly up into position while 
mounting, which was much easier.

Thanks to [FVP] and [DAS] for their effort and help.

If anyone has further questions about the process, don't hesitate to reply.

Cheers,

James Arcus [MPT]

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