Getting to the core
Our summer network upgrades culminated last weekend with the replacement of our aging core switch. We replaced a decade old Cisco 6509 /Supervisor 2 with a sparkling new 6506E sporting a Supervisor 720. I find it fascinating that a network device could survive for over ten years and still serve the core needs of a campus. Buh bye CatOS!
Since we were going to have to unwind ten years of cable buildup anyway, we decided to gut the entire set of racks and reorganize. We were down for about twelve hours during a window from 7pm on Friday night to 7am on Saturday morning, then made a pit stop at the Waffle House. 
Before…
After…
