Meraki MS250 SFP+ 10Gb to HP2920 Stack using SFP+ 10Gb

[AaronVB]

Greetings-

We currently are using four Aruba/HP2920 stacked using HP stacking cables with a command/standby and member arrangement.   Also on the back of the Aruba/HP2920 switches are 10base-t connectors for the connections to the various servers.  All the 2920s are single vlan and same trunk, with no loops.  Not ready to replace the full stack of 2920s, but maxed out for stacking.

Looking to get more ports for expansion and maybe some more manageability/monitoring. We currently use Meraki MX and APs products and they are excellent so it is worth looking at an Meraki switch.   Would the Meraki MS250 be able to connect via a SFP+ module to a SFP+ module in the 2920 for a 10Gb connection (Front port, like port 48)?   Would I be able to use the HPe X242 10G SFP+ to SFP+ 3m Direct Attach Copper Cable J9283B in the Meraki?   Or would it be a Meraki Twinax Cable with SFP+ connectors be the better choice?

[MRCUR]

I think the HPE/Aruba DAC would probably work fine on the MS250, but would obviously not be supported by Meraki if you needed assistance. Same for using a Meraki/Cisco DAC with support from HPE/Aruba. Meraki doesn't block the use of 3rd party transceivers in firmware, however I have seen some rumblings that HPE/Aruba is beginning to do this in recent firmware revs. 

You could also use SFP+ SR transceivers on both sides with a multimode fiber patch cable in between. This would be fully supported by both vendors assuming you had an HPE transceiver on the 2920 side and a Meraki transceiver on the MS250 side. 

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

Yes the MS250 will be able to connect.  To guarantee you have no support issues you would need to use fibre (10GbeSR)

But I suspect either the HP or the Meraki TwinAx 3m cable will be 99% likely to work.

If you are using 10GBaseT you could also consider using the MS350-24X, which includes 8 x MGig ports. MGig ports also do 10GBaseT.

https://meraki.cisco.com/products/switches/ms350-24x

Also note you really want to be using SFP+ to connect servers, rather than 10GBaseT.  10GBaseT has about 100 times more latency than SFP+, and this will impact anything that does lots of transactions, like databases and storage.