Looking at MS250 for Core

[Robertson]

Hello 

I really like the idea of the Meraki cloud switches. However worried about all the terrible reviews they getting with stacking failures and routing issues and so on. So wary about recommending them for my customer.

They will be stacked and handle the vLan routing. They will connect to many HP E2620 PoE switches over single trunks.

The HP trunks have been configured with dot1q encapsulation and have vLan 1 running over them(apparent some issue if native wasn't running over the link or different.) And then the rest of the 8+- vlans.

Can someone asure me they will work and be reliable?

Thank you

[Uberseehandel]

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@Robertsonwrote:

Can someone asure me they will work and be reliable?

Thank you

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I suggest you apply fr a couple of loan switches and see what happens in your environment under realistic conditions.

[Robertson]

Thank you, yes I saw that option.
And will go down that road if I commit to Meraki as the solution. If feed back says I'm wasting my time then I don't want to waste mine and customers time with loans.

[Adam]

I agree with @Uberseehandel, loan switches are the only way to know for sure.  We have MS250's as the core in one of our environments and they work without issues.  We had some issues early on with our MS425 stack but sounded like most of that has been resolved with firmware.  When you have stacked switches it always makes firmware updates a little more tricky too. 

[Robertson]

Thanks Adam, and you have that in a multi vendor environment?

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

I just put a pair of MS250 switches in for a network core a month ago.  They have been working fine.

With regard to linking into other vendors like HP - make sure you have a loop free layer 2 design.  You mention you have single trunks, so that will be fine.  If you want to use multiple trunks to a single HP switch then use LACP to bond them together.

You will love the monitoring that Meraki gives you by having Meraki core switches.

[MFuchs]

We're using 2 MS250 as cores in every location. We're migrating from a ProCurve environment to meraki for simple management. Sure there are a few cavats, but it's running fine and stable now. I can confirm what PhilipDAth says - a loop free design is important. I'm expecting a few UDLD issues on GBIC between meraki and HPE but it's just cosmetic...

[Robertson]

Changed the core switches over to the MS250 Meraki Stack last night. Connected them to 8 HP Edge switches without problem. I dint realise the HP switches were such a mess with their trunks, native vlan mismatches unused vlans and some even in unused LACP groups, with all that mess the trunks still all worked. I had read that if your trunks were not configured identical each side you were in for trouble, but not this time. Cleaned up the trunks on the HP side anyway, next will be to implement LACP between Core and each HP Edge.

Layer 3 setup is easy as pie, and yes yes yes I love the monitoring!