Hardware review & recommendations please

[UIHC]

I have been tasked with setting up Cisco works I'm wondering several things...It will be running on a network of 10,000+ nodes, some 1500 network devices (i.e. switches, routers etc) 256 gig backbone -) We have a 1.2 P III with 2 Gig ram, using disk striping w/parity on 3 HD that 18 G's apiece.
1. How fast will this eat up disk space?
2. Should we start with bigger HD? (we might have a chance to get 36 Gig HD).
3. Should we get a second CPU?
We will be running this on Windows 2000.
We will be using the FULL Monte (all the programs that come in Cisco Works)
Suggestions please.

 

[akarshs]

Hardware which you are useing is off good configuration. To my knowledge if you increase the HDD to 36GB will be good choice.

 

[BigSpring]

Have a look at the "CiscoWorks in Large-Scale Network Environments" doc on CCO. See :--

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/wr2k/prodlit/ckspp_wp.htm

for details of how Cisco say it *should* be scoped, and err on the side of caution.

Have done a similar sized system (initially 1,400 nodes) that was scoped to ultimately manage 6,000 devices. We used four dual Xeon 700's with 1GB ram (one each for RME, Campus, DFM and RTM) and it ran snappily.

Strangely, it appear almost as fast with six test devices as it was with 1,400 live. Weird!?!?! Also, running the browser locally on the CW2k machine was slower than having a remote browser. Again, strange!

My experience would suggest that if you're looking to run Campus, RME and DFM on the same box you're probably going to swamp it...or at least you'll need to have some patience...

Better (if you've the £'s or $'s) to run the main apps on separate boxes (look at 1GHz CPU and >512MB RAM as a base), or at least have a DFM platform and an RME/Campus one...or and RME/DFM and Campus.

I also heard that running on Win2k Pro and not Server was a wee bit faster, though never tried this myself...though it 'feels' likely.

I'd be interested to hear how you get on.....