Why do I need a Cajun?

[booman]

We're bolstering our redundancy, and currently we have a single Cajun with both S8710s plugged into it. We were going to purchase a second Cajun. Avaya told us we could do that, or purchase two switches ourselves, and they would configure them.

Why can't I just plug my two S8700s into my two main core switches that everything else is plugged into? Seems more efficient to get rid of another layer of devices. If you could help me with the pros/cons of my uneducated theory, I'd appreciate it.

 

[Nick44]

You could do that, but it is inadvisable as the IP chit chat between the processor and the gateways is not usually in the same IP range as the customer lan. Normally you would segregate the processor traffic so that you are only dealing with packets relevant to the switch control (or partition the ethernet switches, but then you still have one point of failure) from the general lan traffic. If you loose the link from the S8xxx to the IPSI, you loose everything on the voice side.


Speak softly and carry a big switch

 

[BuckWeet]

setup a seperate vlan on your core switches and toss the cajuns..

BuckWeet

 

[Toni269]

I agree with BuckWeet. But - if you want a couple of Cajun's I've got the P33's in the warehouse, only used them for 2 months...

 

[adscott]

Newbie here and I can't explain the logic behind it but maybe this will help spark some discussion. We have ESS and we have learned that rather then having a private network non routed on these cajuns it is a good idea to make them on a private VLAN but routed. Something about ESS not working or being able to communicate properly???? Can someone help me understand why routed might be better?