HPE7-A11: HPE Aruba Networking Certified Professional - Campus Access ArchitectDemo

A global cruise-line company needs to refresh its current fleet. It will refresh the ship’s internal infrastructure to be cost-effective and improve sustainability. It will replace all WLAN/LAN hardware on the ship. As part of this refresh, the company will not change its existing security requirements. The CIO also wants to minimize the number of unused switch ports. Any future expansion will always require a hardware refresh. The company will begin with the smallest ship, with a maximum of 800 guests.

Each ship has a LAN infrastructure comprising two core switches, up to 10 redundant distribution switches, and up to 500 access switches (400 cabins and 100 technical rooms). The core switches are in the ship’s MDF, and the distribution switches are in the IDFs. Each cabin and technical room receives a single access switch.

The ship’s cabling infrastructure will not be replaced. Each IDF connects to the MDF over SMF, with two pairs available for the interconnect between core and distribution. The SMF length between the MDF and IDF is less than 300 meters (980 ft), and it is OS1 fiber. Each cabin connects to its IDF with one OM2 pair, with a maximum length of 60 meters (200 ft). Each technical room connects to its IDF with one OM2 pair, with lengths from 100 to 150 meters (320 to 500 ft).

For every cabin and technical room, the customer wants to replace its current fanless 2530/2540 switches without changing the requirements, except that the uplink to the distribution switch must be upgraded to 10GbE to accommodate increased network traffic, and the technical rooms require redundant power.

The WLAN infrastructure will be refreshed 1:1, with no new cabling or AP locations. Its WLAN infrastructure uses 200/300-series indoor and outdoor APs running InstantOS (fewer than 300 APs), and the customer has no changes to WLAN requirements.

The cruise-line company will replace its existing Internet connection before the LAN/WLAN refresh. The new Internet connection will offer 99.8% uptime, needed to keep paid guest Wi-Fi continuously operational. With this new Internet connection, the CIO wants to base the design on Aruba’s ESP architecture because the Internet connection is guaranteed.

Based on best practices, what optic type should be recommended for the connection between the MDF and the IDFs?