Small DC Switch Design

Question

Hello,
I'm working on options for a small DC switch design.  This DC has 5
virtual hosts with 10-20 guest vm's each.  Each server has two quad
port gig nics with 6 of the 8 gig ports connected (3 for iSCSI and 3
for data or management.  It also has two 3 node sans each with 2 gig
ports per node, a host of other small servers including voice servers,
management servers, asa firewall, and a few routers.  Total of 50-60
ports as of right now.
Connected to the DC is 7 other buildings each with there own 1 gig
fiber connection serving about 3000 devices in total including
desktops, laptops, ip phones, wireless ap's, building automation,
alarm panels, etc....
Right now in each of the 7 buildings has a 3560G as an aggregation
switch connected back to the DC.  The DC also has a few 3560G's and
3750G's for the sans and servers.  The system seems to work ok for the
most part aside from micro bursts overwhelming the buffers on these
switches and the etherchannel trunks between them dropping a minor
amount of packets.  QOS is configured for the voice network and there
are little to no complaints.
What I would like to know (costs being the biggest factor) is what
would be a better switch design for the current and future traffic in
this network.  Some options I was thinking about are as follows:
I would needs at least 96 ports.
So option A is to go with a 4506-E bundle with 2 48 port line cards,
sup 6l-e and a WS-X4712-SFP+E or something of the sorts.   And then
upgrade to the enterprise services license and do all of the routing
and switching for the DC on this one switch.  Means little redundancy
and no failover.
Option B was to go with the same 4506-E bundle, without the extra
license and without the SFP line card and put in some sort of layer
three aggregation switch, possibly an me3600x.
Option C Is to go with the 4503-E, the SFP line card and the IP
Enterprise services license.  And two top of rack switches, either
2360's or 4948's.
I would like to do some PBR on the aggregation switch, but I am unsure if the me3600x is capable of doing that.
I have no experience in this matter so any other thoughts or
suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Dan.

Answer 1

Disclaimer
The   Author of this posting offers the information contained within this   posting without consideration and with the reader's understanding that   there's no implied or expressed suitability or fitness for any purpose.   Information provided is for informational purposes only and should not   be construed as rendering professional advice of any kind. Usage of  this  posting's information is solely at reader's own risk.
Liability Disclaimer
In   no event shall Author be liable for any damages whatsoever (including,   without limitation, damages for loss of use, data or profit) arising  out  of the use or inability to use the posting's information even if  Author  has been advised of the possibility of such damage.
Posting
If cost is the biggest factor, and the only notable issue now is occasional packet drops due to insufficient buffers, perhaps some buffer tuning would be something to consider.
A really important question to answer is how important redundancy. At lower port densities (3 to 4 stack members), the switch stack is less expensive than a chassis that supports redundancy.  At very low port densities (2 to 3 stack members) the stack might be less expensive than even a non-redundant chassis.
BTW, the 3750-E/X offers much more performance than the original 3750 series.  If offers wire-speed PPS and fabric per switch, twice the ring bandwidth and uses the ring, for unicast, much "smarter".
Perhaps a dual WS-C3750X-12S or WS-C3750X-24S for your core with dual MEC fiber etherchannl links to your aggregation switches?  In the DC itself, you might also use 2960s to provide DC edge ports.  For growth, a dual 3750-X stack would support four 10 gig ports which could be used with 10 gig servers or 10 gig SAN or as a 10gig link to other DC switches, such as the 2960S (which support their own stacking technology).