Managed Switches
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@aaron said:
With 10 offices I would definitely use managed switches, especially for monitoring. I've driven hours before to power cycle a switch because the local staff didn't do it as troubleshooting when I asked. That's the scenario I would be reluctant to repeat.
This is why i recommend them. I am never on site. I can get into them remotely unless shit completely hit the fan. If it is that bad, I will have someone pulling power cords.
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@aaron said:
Depending on the business need. OP asked for reasons to use a managed switch. We could dive deeper into routing, hot swappable PSUs, etc. I just mentioned a few reasons off the top of my head.
You have to be pretty high end to have hot swappable PSUs in switches. Even our access layer switches do not use them. I dobut a small company of 500 is getting into hot swappable switch PSUs at all.
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@Jason said:
@aaron said:
With 10 offices I would definitely use managed switches, especially for monitoring. I've driven hours before to power cycle a switch.
None of that implies a managed switch. a PDU would be far more useful. You can't really get in to locked up managed switch remotely anyway.
And you don't need managed switches for that anyway, Smart switches do that at a fraction of the price. Managed is for when you want that stuff using SNMP tooling, which rarely makes sense in an SMB.
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@alex.olynyk said:
What are some good reasons to install managed switches?
There are basically two big reasons why they are good:
- Ability to be monitored by standard utilities over SNMP. This way you can collect information in a single spot.
- Ability to manage by standard utilities. Same as above but managing instead of monitoring.
Caveats:
- Cost
- Complexity
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@anonymous said:
So you can manage them?.......
Actually they are harder to manage than Smart switches until you are at large scale. For a smaller environment, even up to thousands of systems, stacked smart switches get you far simpler management, centralized monitoring and similar features with simple interfaces.
Once you get beyond that, managed does get better, but without that scale (or a lab where you are doing it to learn) the value is quite low.
Many Smart switches have monitoring options too, often it is only the management options that are limited.
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@Dashrender said:
Non managed switches are often faster than managed one, just an FYI.
All other things being equal, of course. The management introduces overhead.
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@Dashrender said:
@alex.olynyk said:
@Dashrender Yes, how will one make my life easier?
?? what do you mean? How do they make your life easier?
Do you need VLAN? Do you need Layer 3 routing?
It's not management that brings any of those features. Our non-managed switches have always had those features. VLAN, L3, trunking, mirroring, monitoring, per port security, 802.1x... all in non-managed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@alex.olynyk said:
@Dashrender Yes, how will one make my life easier?
?? what do you mean? How do they make your life easier?
Do you need VLAN? Do you need Layer 3 routing?
It's not management that brings any of those features. Our non-managed switches have always had those features. VLAN, L3, trunking, mirroring, monitoring, per port security, 802.1x... all in non-managed.
Now you are talking about "smart" switches which is a third class of switch. I was under the understanding that this conversation was including those under managed as they have basic managed capabilities.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@alex.olynyk said:
@Dashrender Yes, how will one make my life easier?
?? what do you mean? How do they make your life easier?
Do you need VLAN? Do you need Layer 3 routing?
It's not management that brings any of those features. Our non-managed switches have always had those features. VLAN, L3, trunking, mirroring, monitoring, per port security, 802.1x... all in non-managed.
Now you are talking about "smart" switches which is a third class of switch. I was under the understanding that this conversation was including those under managed as they have basic managed capabilities.
Oh, perhaps it is. In most product lines that I have seen, or are familiar with maybe I should say, there are three classes and managed means only the one, not two of them.
For example, I know that Netgear is very clear on unmanaged, smart and managed as three categories. Smart isn't considered managed or unmanaged as a category. Obviously, you CAN manage it, so as an English language term, it is managed. As a switching term, it is not. So a bit confusing, there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@alex.olynyk said:
@Dashrender Yes, how will one make my life easier?
?? what do you mean? How do they make your life easier?
Do you need VLAN? Do you need Layer 3 routing?
It's not management that brings any of those features. Our non-managed switches have always had those features. VLAN, L3, trunking, mirroring, monitoring, per port security, 802.1x... all in non-managed.
Now you are talking about "smart" switches which is a third class of switch. I was under the understanding that this conversation was including those under managed as they have basic managed capabilities.
Oh, perhaps it is. In most product lines that I have seen, or are familiar with maybe I should say, there are three classes and managed means only the one, not two of them.
For example, I know that Netgear is very clear on unmanaged, smart and managed as three categories. Smart isn't considered managed or unmanaged as a category. Obviously, you CAN manage it, so as an English language term, it is managed. As a switching term, it is not. So a bit confusing, there.
Yeah I was working from the same place as Scott. Three levels, the OP was asking only about the top most.
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Thanks to everyone who gave input. I think we will stay with unmanaged for now.
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The logging capabilities of smart switches are really nice to have. A bit more expensive then unmanaged but you get some statistics from them that could be helpful in troubleshooting network related issues.
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@alex.olynyk said:
Thanks to everyone who gave input. I think we will stay with unmanaged for now.
Unmanaged are okay. But the thread, I think, should have pointed you to Smart switches for many purposes. Smart are generally only a tiny bit more expensive than Unmanaged but give you 95% of the capabilities of managed.
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@scottalanmiller It did. I am also looking at Smart Switches. Thank you.
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@alex.olynyk said:
@scottalanmiller It did. I am also looking at Smart Switches. Thank you.
It's a good middle ground price wise. We use all smart switches currently.
