Need some Networking advice

[rickr]

Hello,

I would like to get someone’s opinion on the following changes I would like to make?

• Am I going in the right direction?
• Is this the correct direction 
• What would you do?

Just some Facts:

The current system is a mixture of old brocade and cisco switches and I would like to replace all with Meraki switches. And setup VLANs, place DHCP on the network and the company has 1 location with approx. 175 users, 250 devices, and 85 servers mostly virtualized. All running on 3 VLANs.

I would like to get some feedback on the following changes I want to make during the 

Network cutover:

• Would like to change over the Main network subnet from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.10.0/24 Change from 1.0 network to 10.0 network 
• change or move Server, Printers, and other equipment to their respective VLANs to simplify network traffic, this can be moved at another Time, not during the cutover
• Separate Desktop phones and computers to their own network ports to increase network port speed to the users’ devices (Currently all laptops and desktops are connected through the ShoreTel phone, which only allows the user to get 100MB network connection), this would increase user network connection to 1GB connection.
• Move the wireless to its own VLAN and separate the WIFI networks, Main and GuestMove the building lighting controls to its own VLAN to separate it from our main network
• Move the DHCP Service for each VLAN to the Network to improve network speed and offload this service from the Windows server. This will ensure if the Domain controller was ever down users could always connect to the network shares with cached user credentials and still be able to get to network shares and printers.
•  If the Server DHCP was ever down users could always connect to the network shares with cached user credentials and still be able to get to network shares and printers.

These also can be moved or separated at another time, just wanted to get some feedback on these items

[BrandonS]

Wow, there is a lot there. My first thought though is who refers to class A, B and C like it is 1991? Lol. 

[cmr]

@rickr I'd put the Meraki switches in first and then look at making the changes. 

You don't need a cutover, you can create a new VLAN/subnet for say endpoints, add DHCP to it from the switches, make sure it routes to the existing networks by assigning one access port to it and connecting a computer, then change over each endpoint one by one.

I'd create the voice and endpoint VLANs first and work out what you need to do with the ShoreTel phones to get them passing the right VLAN to the connected device, whilst being on the voice VLAN.  It's pretty easy to figure out usually.

Once you have visibility of the client traffic, you may well find out that only some of the endpoints need 1Gb, so don't waste switchports on the others.

As for the servers, it is definitely a good idea to separate them, but also from each other, in application groups.  Create a VLAN for the finance servers and have just them in it, create another for a different group etc.  You can then use access rules to only allow just the right traffic into that VLAN.  Be aware though that you might want to add an MX for access lists (and therefore inter VLAN routing) for those VLANs, as the MS range hasn't got the greatest ACL support.