topic Switch Recomendation in ONTAP Hardware

Switch Recomendation

Pirho — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 09:45:32 GMT

Looking to purchase an AFF-C250 and a FAS2820, via 25GB. We need to use it as a backend storage switch, we don't need PoE, iSCSI, L3, VoIp, or any other type of application sensitive protocols, just using it for replication, NFS, mounting for VCenters. Currently we have a pair of Cisco 3550, and 5000 nexus switches, but they are 10GB. Switches need to be able to be clustered together, in an HA pair. Any suggestions on what kind of Cisco we can get? The current ones need to be uplinked to the new ones for data transfer as well so they need to be able to negotiate to 10gb from 25.

Re: Switch Recomendation

paul_stejskal — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 16:58:02 GMT

You can't use just any switches. It has to be something supported on hwu.netapp.com. Generally buying a FAS/AFF cluster comes with the purchase of a switch. I don't believe either of those are supported. Also they must be independent from data network switches.

Re: Switch Recomendation

Pirho — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:01:16 GMT

Based on what we were already quoted, (Arub 8325) which cant be used as a cluster interconnect switch. Thanks for pointing out the NHU, I keep forgetting about that.

Re: Switch Recomendation

AlexDawson — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 03:23:23 GMT

My read is that they aren't using it as a NetApp Cluster Switch - they're using it as a front end data access switch? And if so, there's far fewer requirements.