Switching

Dear Community,I'm new in the networking world and I'd like to ask you about switch failover and patch panel cabling.

In my service we have critical open-space operators in a 24/7 activity and no network interruption is tolerated.
Our PCs are connected on two 48p "central" switches (Switch--> patch panel--Pc).

The problem is that if one of the switches goes down, half of our operators will lost the connection and I have manually replaced the faulty switch with the spare one.

So, I took a look at the VC architecture of the EX series switch but I still do not understand how to cable my patch panels so if one of the switches goes down, the operators will still continue to have network access without losing their connectivity.

Is there any patch panels with dual connection for every port? or any other technology?

I'm sorry if the question has already been asked but I didn't find it :(

I hope that my question was clear enough for you.

Thank you in advance.
Mickael

If you need redundancy to the PC level you will also need to have two NIC in the PC and have it connected to two patch ports and then two switches.

Whether the two switches are in a virtual chassis or not the setup will have the ability to survive the switch failure either way.

If you are ok with a physical failover your could dual wire the site to the PC to patch panel and just swap the plug in the actual office during a failure.

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Steve Puluka BSEET - Juniper Ambassador
IP Architect - DQE Communications Pittsburgh, PA (Metro Ethernet & ISP - Retired)
http://puluka.com/home
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Steve posted  the best practice have 2 nics in each device.

 Saying that , like you I worked in an environment just like this and setup an A side and B side.  The switches were not in a VC for planned outages and separate control plan and data plan redundancy .

So when issue / planned outages were we would call the business continuity plan to have people use devices named Axxx  or Byyyy. 

This worked well for this 24/7/365 site.  The site needed POE to each desk to support the call center. 

If your site does not need POE you could do is setup a fall back. 

Install  access point(s)  with 802.3ad and connect to both switches.  Then work with your pc support admin to define a way to have the devices use wifi if eth0 is down.  

APs are CHEAP and most desktop and all laptops come with a wifi card . :) 

Good Luck.

Thank you very much tgreaser and Steve.

I'll continue investigating and if needed I'll let you know for my final decision :)