I started out with two stacked 6248 switches in L3 mode (core). It had 3 VLANs and no ports in VLAN1. I can connect to any one of the VLAN interfaces and manage. I am not sure allowing anyone to hit the management interfaces is a good idea but we will revisit my concern. Life was easy for the most part.
Later we implemented the iSCSI SAN network with the two non-stacked 5524's. Since I want the SAN infrastructure separate from the rest of the network, I didn't connect the 5524's to the network. I just connect a laptop directly to the switch and manage them.
Now we are adding the VoIP to the mix with the four 6248P switches in non-stacked configuration. The entire network is shown below minus the two 5524 SAN switches.
Example:(core switch)
VLAN10: 192.168.1.0/24
VLAN11: 192.168.2.0/24
VLAN12: 192.168.3.0/24
VLAN13: 192.168.4.0/24
VLAN200: 192.168.5.0/24 (Proposed new management VLAN with routing enabled)
VoIP is working fine. The four 6248POE switches work as a L2 switch, no L3 routing. Each ethernet port is in general mode with VLAN10 (U) and VLAN11 (T). There are four trunk lines, one from each POE switch to the core switches with both VLAN 10 and 11 as allowed VLANs. Inter-VLAN routing is handled by the core switches. I like to manage all the switches from my workstation which is in VLAN10.
However, I am facing a switch management problem and need your input. I am probably not clear on VLAN1, mangement vlan and non-routable mangement vlan concepts.
In each POE switch, I thought about moving the default management vlan from VLAN1 to some other vlan (ip address vlan 200) and assigning an IP number (say 192.168.5.10x). Obviously, VLAN 200 will have to be part of the allowed list in each trunk line. Will my proposed solution work? There won't be anything in VLAN 200 on the core and POE switches except the trunk ports. Will 200 be active for routing on the core switch? Doesn't the management vlan 200 need an Ethernet port with a functional node to be active?
Thanks