Question : Problem: Cisco Catalyst 3560G-24TS-E VLAN Deployment

Please review the following deployment plan and let me know if I'm going to be trying to do something silly/wrong/down-right-stupid.  Ultimately, my goal will be to configure a VLAN environment without using an actual router... just the routing abilities of the catalyst 3560G switches.

Our network is going to be physically redundant, having all edge switches and servers connected to two 3560G core switches.

The ports on all edge switches will be configured for VLAN membership, with ports 1 and 2 of each switch being connected to the core1 and core2 switches respectively (will these uplinks need to be trunk ports?)

The core switches will then have a link (port group if needed) between the two of them (trunk port).

It is my understanding that I can use the ip helper to let a single DHCP server sitting on my "server" VLAN to assign IP addresses on all VLANs.

The DHCP will be configured to set the default gateway in the clients to that of the VLAN Interface's IP Address (configured within the switch and propogated via VTP).  It is my understanding that this will allow the clients in any VLAN to communicate with any other client in any other VLAN so long as they are permitted by ACL.

Answer : Problem: Cisco Catalyst 3560G-24TS-E VLAN Deployment

This is exactly how we do it where I am. We have our layer 3 switches handle the routing for our vlans on the site. We also have one dhcp server that sits on a "server vlan" and it hands out IP addresses to systems on other vlans.

If you have layer 3 switches, you have the perfect router to handle the VLAN routing.