Stack Exchange

Network Work this Weekend

George Beech

I will be upgrading the Stack Exchange network’s switching infrastructure on Saturday February, 26th. There should be minimal downtime while I do this, however the sites may be a little slow as I work through the Web Tier. Additionally there will be about a 10-20 minute complete site downtime while I move the DB servers and routers.

What exactly will I be doing? Why, I’ll be removing our current Dell PowerConnect 5448 switches and replacing them with Cisco 2960-S-48TS-L switches.

The plan is to start working on moving the web tier Saturday afternoon and be finished moving all services by early evening. I will post to Blog.Serverfault about one hour before the start of work.

Posted by George Beech (@GABeech) on February 22nd, 2011
Filed under Hardware, infrastructure, maintenance
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  • Joe

    Out of curiosity can you explain why you’re switching switches? What features/improvement does the new one have?

    • I’ll be following up next week with an in depth explanation, keep an eye out for it.

      • CJ

        I am interested in your reason for switching, as well. We are currently an all Cisco shop, but are considering Dells for replacing some of our Access layer switches to save money since budgets are tight at the moment.

      • We are looking at a moderate purchase of switches to start a new project, since Dells are on the table due to cost, I would really like to hear about your experience with them.

  • I’m also curious about the switch change. I’ve been pretty happy with the Dell 62xx series, and the price is a lot better than the comparable Ciscos.

  • Mxx

    I might be a bit too late to the party, but i just read your blog post regarding not liking the way linux was working for your routing/firewall. Have you considered pfSense project? It’s a free open-source project that offers features equivalent to $50k-100k Cisco units.