A core switch in a mid-sized office?

Question

Computer networks

Hello!
Help with advice to a beginner, you need to buy a pair of L3 switches for the network core. I know that there have already been similar topics more than once and I have read them, but they are all three or more years old, I would like to hear fresh proposals.
Now there is no core at all, all switches are connected in series to each other. I have never been involved in planning and building networks, but now such a need has arisen. I read a lot of articles on this topic and came to the conclusion that I need two levels: the network core (L3) and the access level (L2-L3).
What we have: 120 users, 20 network devices (printers, cameras), 7 servers (hell, mail, 1c, file hosting, gateway to the Internet).
What I would like: to assemble a core of two switches (for fault tolerance), to separate users, servers, cameras and IP phones into different VLANs, to be able to prioritize traffic (for cameras and telephony), well, everything seems to be.
Tell me, is there anything else worth paying attention to? At the moment, no one throws many gigabyte files over the network and is not planned in the future either. I have never dealt with configuring ciscos in the console, so I give priority to the ability to make settings in the GUI. No budget has been allocated yet, because I don’t even know from which price range to choose a piece of iron for such requirements. There are a lot of options on Yandex.Market, your eyes run wide, tell me what you should pay attention to? So that it is not expensive and with a margin for the future, since the office will grow by ~ 50 people in the next year or two.

Answer 1

Take some Microt for 20-30 thousand, it will go great.

Answer 2

IMHO L3 on the switch is a lot for you, the router will be normal, and it will be easier to manage (write rules).
Reservation .. you need to understand what the goal is and whether it justifies the investment in this expensive business.
To choose, you need to understand how many rules and what kind of traffic (volumes) you drive.

Answer 3

Buy what thread L3 Dlink and don't bother

Answer 4

HP Procurve 5406ZL (zl5412 if you need a lot of ports)
You can safely take it.
Or in general HP Procurve Switch 5304xl (5308xl)
It costs a penny (bu), but is already a little outdated (no POE, only telnet, no PIM Sparse Mode, and ACL is a little simpler)
Lifetime warranty too.

Answer 5

Do you know what is the problem with your question?
You have specified the number of end devices (120+20+7), but you have not specified how many ports you need on the core switch. And some respondents didn't notice that it's not the same thing at all. They simply threw out (unconsciously) the access level from your scheme, and began to offer and discuss devices for 96 or 200 ports ... While everything depends on your scheme of the future network, and you may have enough at the kernel level 24 or 16 ports. We don't know how many offices/rooms you have in the building. And you did not pay attention to this problem in the answers (the reason for which is still a lack of information in the question), and if you did pay attention, you did not express it explicitly.

Answer 6

8 X CRS326-24G-2S+RM (8*$199=$1592)
1 X CRS309-1G-8S+IN ($269)
1 X RB4011iGS+RM ($199)
Total: $2060
is OK

Answer 7

We use cisco WS-C4507R+E (MPC8572)
200 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
4 Ten Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
I don't remember any problems.

Answer 8

Two Catalysts (second under reserve).
Beautifully resolve user subnets, printers, cameras through VRFs.

Answer 9

It is difficult to advise anything specific here, since, say, Cisco and Mikrotik are slightly different "weight categories". However, in many places (and this also depends on the budget) their niches overlap. At our enterprise, we decided not to rely on one vendor and not overpay, and we actually have only a few: D-Link, Mikrotik (CRS, RB series, hAP, etc.), SNR. The main switch was both Mikrotik CRS326 and D-Link DGS-1210 (rotation at the time of D-Link failure), which was completely enough for our tasks. The network is also divided by weeds, and all routing is on RB3011. There is no fault tolerance, but there is no big request for it in our particular case.