Topology

[24giovanni]

I am trying to set up a my environment for internetworking and am hoping if someone could look at the topology I am thinking on using below was the way to go. Would this way be the best way to solve any connectivity, reliability, network management, and flexibility issues that may have come up?

Are there certain services and software packages needed? I am not really familiar yet with OSI so if someone can help out with that that would be great.

Could someone please feel free to point out the best setup of the 2 pics.



or

[brady]

What connection will you have?

[brady]

I can see the network creeping along without some speed behind things...

IMO : The 2nd pic you posted would work better. Less gateways for "workstations" to pass through... etc.

[24giovanni]

More opinions are welcomed.

[bla!!]

I personally like them both, but for different reasons.

topologyzj8-
Pros: It is very simple and easy to understand. It will be easy to troubleshoot and very easy to expand. Security is easier to implement on this topology due the servers and workstations being separated physically onto different subnets. With VLan capability there shouldn't be any problem getting the connectivity set up that you need.

Cons: It has a single point of failure for both the workstations and the servers located at the switch.

internettingzt4-
Pros: Redundant connections through both switches provide much greater reliability. No need for VLans (except for the workstations) due to servers having connections to both subnets.

Cons: Cost, administration is more difficult.

In my opinion, you need to evaulate how reliable your server infrastructure needs to be versus the administration/setup difficulty. A lot of this will depend on the size of the organization. I would recommend topologyzj8 for smaller to mid size organizations while I would say internettingzt4 would be much better for larger scale organizations.

[24giovanni]

Bla, How could I solve "It has a single point of failure for both the workstations and the servers located at the switch." I appreciate your help and opinion.

And on the internettingzt4- would you have the servers connecting to the main router, eliminating the 1 vlan switch? Just keeping the vlan switch on the workstations?

[mBernhardt]

I would go for the second topology. (topologyzj8)

Less complexity. Sure, single point of failure, but troubleshooting will be far easier.


Most of your administrator for this will take place at the router. Bridging the two LANs and applying Traffic Rules/Shaping/Whatever.

[Law]

My opinion:

I think the first topology looks like it would cost more. You'll have to do cabling, extra NIC, cable. But it would be the more efficient because of it's redundancy. I'm not sure how you are load balancing, I thought load balancing is deploying 2 or more of the same server, take for instance 2 web server or 2 FTP server for load balancing when you can't predict how much traffic one can handle, you used the second either active or passive, passive being it'll come on when it's needed automatically while just acting as a backup. Wouldn't it just be link redundancies from the look, and wouldn't it be more cheaper to just create a link between the switches and configured VLAN trunking?

I can see you have two FTP server, but it would be better to connect the two FTP server together through their NIC for load balancing, minimizing traffic on the LAN.

I think picture two topology is good, if you want link redundancy, just connect the two switches together and configured VLAN trunking. Even if the link between the two switch failed, you still have the router. It's a triangle that you want to configured.

I like to put the printer server on the workstation switch, that's just me.

Email and FTP, if they are used internally than they will be OK in the LAN, but Email server are usually not so they are kept in the DMZ because sometime your users want to retrieve their email from home or access them. Though you can create a VPN, it would actually cost more, cheaper to do a DMZ unless you are worry about security, than a VPN would be a better solution.

What about a backup plan, have you thought about what would happen if one server goes down? Need a backup plan, it's the most important thing, because losing data or downtime is the thing you don't want to happen. Time is money and when you don't have a disaster or backup plan your company can lose more money than deploying one.

What else...can't think of anything else....give me an idea