[Techtalk] Networking question

[Betty Johnson]

Hey all

For many years, I have been a desktop support analyst. Over the last
couple of months, major changes have taken place. The organization I
am working with has splintered into 2 factions and I am now the sole
IT support for one of them. This includes, servers, networks printers,
etc etc for 11 different offices in our region. It is also mostly a
Windows organization so this may be OT so if it is please respond to
me off list.

I am being asked to do things now that I am not totally familiar with
and up until now it has not been a problem. A little googling,
research, testing on my own systems at home, and I can usually find
the answers. However, I do not have managed switches or a Blade Server
in my house, so I have had some issues that I am not sure how to deal
with....

However, the biggest issue right now is our phone system. We are using
a BCM-50 to set up VOIP with Avaya IP phones. I have a Layer 2 HP
procurve switch model 2510. I need to set up VLANS on the switch to
service the VOIP. I have no idea how to do this and not mess up my
network. I should also probably separate the management part of my
network with the Data part using VLANs. If the switch is not able to
handle the routing, I may end up building a Linux router to take care
of this.

I know there are a lot of experience network admins on this list and I
am really hoping you can help me out here. Thanks in advance for all
your help and suggestions.