HSRP availability in datacenters?

Fri May 11 19:56:59 UTC 2007

On Fri, 11 May 2007, Randal Kohutek wrote:

> I agree, 6500s or 4500s for distribution are where it's at ... Unfortunately
> they cost a lot. Which is why the suits are considering financing them by
> charging for the features they provide.

One way I've seen providers address is this to have two different classes 
of service offerings.  One has redundancy built in and the other doesn't 
- then you price the offerings accordingly.  That could apply to basic 
ping-and-power colo, managed services, or anything in between.  The cost 
difference could be justified by the fact that the redundant service 
takes up resources (finite resources at that) on two different big 
expensive switches.

> This has been a hot topic around the office, with all of us network guys
> saying `keep hsrp everywhere` because it makes our phones ring less, but we
> realize that network upgrades aren't free, which is making the non-IT folks
> all antsy.

And that's a very valid point.  Many organizations pay different amounts 
of attention to manpower costs vs. capex to buy the big expensive switches 
and opex to keep things running.  Manpower is (hopefully ;) in your 
organization) not cheap.

jms