What should I do for network management: vswitches and their differences (1)

Vswitches can be divided into many types according to various classification standards. Because different types of switches have different functions, it is very useful to know about different types of switches. The following is a detailed introduction.

Stackable Switch

A switch stack is a dedicated connection cable provided by the manufacturer. The "UP" Stack port of a switch is directly connected to the "DOWN" Stack port of another switch. To expand the number of ports of a single vswitch. Generally, switches can stack 4 ~ 9.

ID of a stackable Switch

The so-called stackable Switch refers to a switch that generally has both "UP" and "DOWN" stacked ports. When multiple switches are connected together, they act like a modular switch. A stacked switch can be managed as a unit device. In general, when there are multiple switches stacked, one of them can be managed switch. You can use the managed switch to manage other "independent switches" in the stacked switch.

Stack switches generally have two stack modes: Star stack and Chrysanthemum chain stack. Chrysanthemum chain stack is a cascade-based stack technology that has no special requirements on the switch hardware. It supports port concatenation and software at a relatively high speed, finally, we can build a multi-switch cascade structure. Through the loop, we can achieve redundancy to a certain extent. The Chrysanthemum chained stack mode does not have topology management. It is applicable to a single node mechanism that requires high-density ports and can be used for network edges. The star stack mode is applicable to a single-node LAN that requires high-efficiency and high-density ports. The star stack mode overcomes the high latency impact of multi-layer forwarding in the chrysanthemum chain stack mode, but needs to provide a high-bandwidth matrix, the cost is high, and the matrix interface is generally not universal. The stacked ports of both the stack center and the member switch cannot be used to connect to other network devices.

Stackable switches are mainly used in the network edge of small and medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises to conveniently expand the network, mainly in the LAN upgrade and transformation of enterprises and the overall speed-up of network expansion. At the same time, because the stackable switch has the advantages of rapid deployment, good value, scalability and ease of management, it has been widely used, especially in e-commerce applications.

Modular Switch

Based on the port structure of the vswitch, The vswitch can be roughly divided into two different structures: fixed port switch and modular switch.

First, let's talk about the fixed port switch. As the name suggests, the fixed port is fixed. If it is port 8, it can only have eight ports and cannot be added. 16 ports can only have 16 ports and cannot be expanded. Currently, vswitches with fixed ports are common and there is no clear rule on the number of ports. Generally, port 8, port 16, and port 24 are standard ports.

What is a modular switch? A modular switch is a vswitch equipped with multiple idle slots. You can select a number of modules with different speeds and different interface types to meet the ever-changing network needs. The number of ports of a modular switch depends on the number of modules and the number of slots. In a modular switch, different numbers of free slots are reserved for users to expand various interfaces. The more slots reserved, the larger the room for user expansion. Generally, the number of slots of the module switch cannot be less than two.

Generally, enterprise-level switches should consider scalability, compatibility, and troubleshooting. Therefore, modular switches should be used to obtain more ports. Modular switches are much more expensive in terms of price, but with greater flexibility and scalability, users can choose any number of modules with different rates and different interface types, to meet ever-changing network needs. As shown in, it is a modular and Fast Ethernet switch with four pluggable modules, which can be flexibly configured as needed.