RE: NANOG Digest, Vol 65, Issue 74

[Cliff Bowles <cliff.bowles () apollogrp edu>]

As stated, every vendor has its merits. If you really put some time into developing a list of requirements and then 
structure a bakeoff that tests those, you will learn a lot.

Some things to think about:
* don't let JUNOS or any other CLI deter you. You just need to factor in training and hiring efforts/costs. We switched 
to Juniper for 50+ campus routers (haven't used their switches yet) because they had way better bang for the buck. The 
engineers that whined about it not being Cisco were not the ones I cared to keep. The engineers that went out and 
learned JUNOS then slapped it on their resume were, by far, the more reliable and skilled engineers. Also, when you are 
hiring, I bet that you will find that engineers with substantial experience in other platforms will also perform very 
well on the technical interviews. They will probably know advanced BGP, MPLS, tunneling, multicast, QOS and other stuff 
that your average interviewee does not. It's a mindset.

*politics: we replaced a large section of our network with Foundry (a price-per-port) decision. They worked as well as 
any vendor out there, but their support was... not polished as Cisco or Juniper. But the real problem came from the low 
level support engineers who had a CCNA and were Cisco-oriented. Now, when we had Cisco blade/power/code failures, it 
was a "network failure". When the Foundry had a problem, it was a "Foundry failure". I watched a huge outage due to a 
poor spanning tree design get branded as a Foundry issue. Management hears this enough and eventually we are told to 
replace the Foundry switches. I pulled ticket logs and proved that the support team had nearly twice the amount of open 
tickets and logged failures with Cisco as they did with Foundry, but it didn't matter.

*politics again: If you are a big cisco shop and you decide to use another vendor somewhere, I GUARANTEE that a 
regional sales VP and some ducklings in suits will soon walk directly into the CIO's office. They will argue that the 
bakeoff was skewed, that price-per-port value doesn't factor in a lot of other value that cisco brings, they will even 
question the skillset of your engineers who performed the bakeoff, etc... they will instill Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt. 
They will offer another 2 or 3 % discount, they will throw in free professional services, and so on. Hell, they may put 
a Cisco employee on your board of directors. Short story - if there's a lot of money involved, you may wind up back 
with Cisco. I've seen it more than once

That being said, I don't dislike Cisco at all. Their support is top notch and their training is pretty good. They take 
good care of their clients. A LOT of their products are good... some are not. But I did want to prepare you for the fun 
if you seriously consider another vendor.

We have selected Mellanox for a small data warehouse, but that was a point solution due to the Infiniband requirements.
We have selected Arista for a large Hadoop deployment. So far, they are a great product and a great value. Support 
seems good, but we haven't called them much yet. That's a good thing.

One other thing to consider is future state and emerging technologies. If you are an architect or if you work with 
architecture to obtain design direction, ask about future needs for multi-tenancy, SDN, automation and such. I think 
you'll find that not only is Arista way out ahead of some vendors with this, they are using Open source code, more or 
less. Cisco has onePK, but their automation and API integration is not only proprietary, it's misleading. I haven't 
seen the other vendor solutions yet, so I can't say who is BEST at automation, orchestration, and SDN...

So... determine what's important to your network today and in 3-5 years, then look at what's being offered.

cwb

-----Original Message-----
From: nanog-request () nanog org [mailto:nanog-request () nanog org]
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 8:18 PM
To: nanog () nanog org
Subject: NANOG Digest, Vol 65, Issue 74

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
      Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc... (Phil Fagan)
   2. Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
      Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc... (Mike Hale)
   3. Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
      Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc... (Phil Fagan)
   4. Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
      Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc... (Brent Jones)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:11:01 -0600
From: Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com>
To: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog () nanog org\)" <nanog () nanog org>
Subject: Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
        Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...
Message-ID:
        <CAPhg-wRuiaopSV1PbkqaXjWHroi62cxEY=A=dQ7RGbo70K8E7w () mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

I've had nothing but good luck with Juniper support and well with Cisco you pay for support too. I will say Arista 
support was great, however, I'm still hesitant to put them in full production; but I think that is lack of experience 
with them speaking.

Do the bake off in your lab and let'm run!


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List < blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:

>  Let me also clarify, Price per port is not the final deciding factor.
> We are looking much more at a combination of daily operational sanity,
> troubleshooting features, operational feature set, vendor support
> quality and price.****
>
> ** **
>
> Support is absolute key.  When we need help, we need help quickly and
> knowledgeable support.  The name checkpoint comes to mind when I think
> of something I DON?T want for support quality.  It also causes
> nausea?****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks,****
>
> ** **
>
> Blake****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Phil Fagan [mailto:philfagan () gmail com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:08 PM
> *To:* Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
> *Cc:* NANOG (nanog () nanog org)
> *Subject:* Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks,
> Dell Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...****
>
> ** **
>
> I love JUNOS, don't really care for IOS. I really trust Cisco and
> Juniper's hardware, with that being said Arista is your best bet for
> cheapest port. I've only seen Arista in lab, not in the wild yet so I
> can't speak for how I would trust them. You mention getting bit by
> single sups, I believe as of late Arista has had issue with OSPF
> failover time between dual-sups in HA setups.****
>
> ** **
>
> I used to have a Dell laptop....but I'm sure their great too. In the
> end for me I only trust Cisco or Juniper. I've been burnt by Foundry
> and am waiting to on Arista. ****
>
> ** **
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:****
>
> Howdy,
>                 I have been working on a proposal for the organization
> I work for to move into the 10gbit datacenter.  We have a small
> datacenter currently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit.  We have
> traditionally been a full Cisco shop, however I was asked to do a
> price comparison as well as features with other major alternative
> vendors.  I was also asked to do some digging as far as what "the real world" thinks about these possible vendors.
>
> We currently have 2 Cisco 6509's with 8 48 port cards Sup 3BXL, 2
> Cisco
> 4506 with 5x 48 port card and Sup V's and 2 4900M switches providing
> 10gbit to a very specialized implementation.  With all of our
> technology, we try to not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge.  We need
> 5 9's or more of uptime yearly so stability is preferable to cool
> features.  We currently have single supervisors in all of our switches
> (not my decision) and it has bit us recently.  Everything we are
> looking at needs to support NSF/SSO/VSS of some kind.
>
> What we have been looking to replace it with in Cisco world is Nexus
> 7004 Core and Nexus 5596UP with 2200 series Fabric extenders for
> Dist/Access as well as 2200 Fabric Extenders within our Dell Blade
> Chassis.  Realistically we will be under 800 ports of 10gbit
> (excluding Blades) which puts us in a tough spot from what I can find.
> Currently everything we have is EOR, however TOR would make more sense
> allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax connectivity to servers.
>
> With this in mind, I have a few questions...
>
> It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and
> investigate possible options.  I had not heard much about them, so I
> look to the experts.  Pro's and Con's?  Real world experience?  Looks
> to me they have a lot of cool features, but I'm slightly concerned
> with how new they might be, how reliable it would be as well as their
> QA/bugfix history.  Also 24x4 support and hardware replacement.
> Everything in our datacenter currently has a 2 or 4 hour cisco
> contract on it and critical core components have a cold spare in inventory.
>
> Dell Force 10... I know Dell tries to get you to drink the Koolaid on
> this solution, I was a former Dell Partner and they even pushed me to
> get demo equipment going...  What's the experience with their chassis switches?
>  Stability?  Configuration sanity?  What do people like?  What do
> people hate?
>
> Juniper.  What do people like? What do people hate?  Have the Layer 2
> issues of historical age gone away?  Is the config still xml ish?  It
> has been about 5 years since I worked with anything Juniper.
>
> Extreme networks.  I know very little about them historically.  What
> is good, what is bad?  Is the config sane?
>
> I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our
> sanitized internal conclusions.  On and off list responses welcome.
>
> If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to
> the list with similarly asked questions.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Blake****
>
>
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> -- ****
>
> Phil Fagan****
>
> Denver, CO****
>
> 970-480-7618****



--
Phil Fagan
Denver, CO
970-480-7618


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:27:34 -0700
From: Mike Hale <eyeronic.design () gmail com>
To: Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog () nanog org\)" <nanog () nanog org>
Subject: Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
        Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...
Message-ID:
        <CAN3um4zC81=x8zc7_Q8e4Tr8bg1hMqEezX45qK5-=GOMVDe2pQ () mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

I'm exact opposite of Phil.  I love IOS and hate JunOS....for that
single reason, I'm really against buying Juniper in our shop for
pretty much anything.  :)

Still, to be fair, the hardware seems to be really, really stable and
well built.  I don't think we've had a failure across our Junipers in
the short time I've been with my day job.

As far as support goes...the only time we had issues with our Nexus
gear I was actually really, really disappointed with Cisco.  We were
upgrading our firmware, ran into some major issues with VPC and HSRP
due some firmware changes, and the Tac engineer we got sucked
*massive* lemons.  When I call Tac with a situation like this, I
expect someone who can code a working config from scratch based on the
old config, not someone who's going to sit there scratching his head,
running useless packet captures, and being silent when we ask
questions.  *sigh*

/rant off

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com> wrote:
> I've had nothing but good luck with Juniper support and well with Cisco you
> pay for support too. I will say Arista support was great, however, I'm
> still hesitant to put them in full production; but I think that is lack of
> experience with them speaking.
>
> Do the bake off in your lab and let'm run!
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:
>
> >  Let me also clarify, Price per port is not the final deciding factor.
> > We are looking much more at a combination of daily operational sanity,
> > troubleshooting features, operational feature set, vendor support quality
> > and price.****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > Support is absolute key.  When we need help, we need help quickly and
> > knowledgeable support.  The name checkpoint comes to mind when I think of
> > something I DON?T want for support quality.  It also causes nausea?****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > Thanks,****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > Blake****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > *From:* Phil Fagan [mailto:philfagan () gmail com]
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:08 PM
> > *To:* Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
> > *Cc:* NANOG (nanog () nanog org)
> > *Subject:* Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
> > Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > I love JUNOS, don't really care for IOS. I really trust Cisco and
> > Juniper's hardware, with that being said Arista is your best bet for
> > cheapest port. I've only seen Arista in lab, not in the wild yet so I can't
> > speak for how I would trust them. You mention getting bit by single sups, I
> > believe as of late Arista has had issue with OSPF failover time between
> > dual-sups in HA setups.****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > I used to have a Dell laptop....but I'm sure their great too. In the end
> > for me I only trust Cisco or Juniper. I've been burnt by Foundry and am
> > waiting to on Arista. ****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> > blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:****
> >
> > Howdy,
> >                 I have been working on a proposal for the organization I
> > work for to move into the 10gbit datacenter.  We have a small datacenter
> > currently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit.  We have traditionally been a full
> > Cisco shop, however I was asked to do a price comparison as well as
> > features with other major alternative vendors.  I was also asked to do some
> > digging as far as what "the real world" thinks about these possible vendors.
> >
> > We currently have 2 Cisco 6509's with 8 48 port cards Sup 3BXL, 2 Cisco
> > 4506 with 5x 48 port card and Sup V's and 2 4900M switches providing 10gbit
> > to a very specialized implementation.  With all of our technology, we try
> > to not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge.  We need 5 9's or more of uptime
> > yearly so stability is preferable to cool features.  We currently have
> > single supervisors in all of our switches (not my decision) and it has bit
> > us recently.  Everything we are looking at needs to support NSF/SSO/VSS of
> > some kind.
> >
> > What we have been looking to replace it with in Cisco world is Nexus 7004
> > Core and Nexus 5596UP with 2200 series Fabric extenders for Dist/Access as
> > well as 2200 Fabric Extenders within our Dell Blade Chassis.  Realistically
> > we will be under 800 ports of 10gbit (excluding Blades) which puts us in a
> > tough spot from what I can find.  Currently everything we have is EOR,
> > however TOR would make more sense allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax
> > connectivity to servers.
> >
> > With this in mind, I have a few questions...
> >
> > It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and investigate
> > possible options.  I had not heard much about them, so I look to the
> > experts.  Pro's and Con's?  Real world experience?  Looks to me they have a
> > lot of cool features, but I'm slightly concerned with how new they might
> > be, how reliable it would be as well as their QA/bugfix history.  Also 24x4
> > support and hardware replacement.  Everything in our datacenter currently
> > has a 2 or 4 hour cisco contract on it and critical core components have a
> > cold spare in inventory.
> >
> > Dell Force 10... I know Dell tries to get you to drink the Koolaid on this
> > solution, I was a former Dell Partner and they even pushed me to get demo
> > equipment going...  What's the experience with their chassis switches?
> >  Stability?  Configuration sanity?  What do people like?  What do people
> > hate?
> >
> > Juniper.  What do people like? What do people hate?  Have the Layer 2
> > issues of historical age gone away?  Is the config still xml ish?  It has
> > been about 5 years since I worked with anything Juniper.
> >
> > Extreme networks.  I know very little about them historically.  What is
> > good, what is bad?  Is the config sane?
> >
> > I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our
> > sanitized internal conclusions.  On and off list responses welcome.
> >
> > If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to the
> > list with similarly asked questions.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Blake****
> >
> >
> >
> > ****
> >
> > ** **
> >
> > -- ****
> >
> > Phil Fagan****
> >
> > Denver, CO****
> >
> > 970-480-7618****
>
>
>
> --
> Phil Fagan
> Denver, CO
> 970-480-7618



--
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:14:18 -0600
From: Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com>
To: Mike Hale <eyeronic.design () gmail com>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog () nanog org\)" <nanog () nanog org>
Subject: Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
        Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...
Message-ID:
        <CAPhg-wT=5_CeH3e9J2zo67TKMVYLmmx3fCWoDMxBV93csCfedQ () mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Mike brings up a good point though; the effort, cost, and risk of
introducing a new CLI to an environment sometimes is masked until you
really need to dig in and work through outages. Familiarity with a codebase
or at least with how the code "thinks" should go a long way when deciding
what to put in your racks. Of course, how do you quantify that?


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 7:27 PM, Mike Hale <eyeronic.design () gmail com>wrote:

> I'm exact opposite of Phil.  I love IOS and hate JunOS....for that
> single reason, I'm really against buying Juniper in our shop for
> pretty much anything.  :)
>
> Still, to be fair, the hardware seems to be really, really stable and
> well built.  I don't think we've had a failure across our Junipers in
> the short time I've been with my day job.
>
> As far as support goes...the only time we had issues with our Nexus
> gear I was actually really, really disappointed with Cisco.  We were
> upgrading our firmware, ran into some major issues with VPC and HSRP
> due some firmware changes, and the Tac engineer we got sucked
> *massive* lemons.  When I call Tac with a situation like this, I
> expect someone who can code a working config from scratch based on the
> old config, not someone who's going to sit there scratching his head,
> running useless packet captures, and being silent when we ask
> questions.  *sigh*
>
> /rant off
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:11 PM, Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com> wrote:
> > I've had nothing but good luck with Juniper support and well with Cisco
> you
> > pay for support too. I will say Arista support was great, however, I'm
> > still hesitant to put them in full production; but I think that is lack
> of
> > experience with them speaking.
> >
> > Do the bake off in your lab and let'm run!
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> > blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:
> >
> > >  Let me also clarify, Price per port is not the final deciding factor.
> > > We are looking much more at a combination of daily operational sanity,
> > > troubleshooting features, operational feature set, vendor support
> quality
> > > and price.****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > Support is absolute key.  When we need help, we need help quickly and
> > > knowledgeable support.  The name checkpoint comes to mind when I think
> of
> > > something I DON?T want for support quality.  It also causes nausea?****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > Thanks,****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > Blake****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > *From:* Phil Fagan [mailto:philfagan () gmail com]
> > > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:08 PM
> > > *To:* Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
> > > *Cc:* NANOG (nanog () nanog org)
> > > *Subject:* Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
> > > Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > I love JUNOS, don't really care for IOS. I really trust Cisco and
> > > Juniper's hardware, with that being said Arista is your best bet for
> > > cheapest port. I've only seen Arista in lab, not in the wild yet so I
> can't
> > > speak for how I would trust them. You mention getting bit by single
> sups, I
> > > believe as of late Arista has had issue with OSPF failover time between
> > > dual-sups in HA setups.****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > I used to have a Dell laptop....but I'm sure their great too. In the end
> > > for me I only trust Cisco or Juniper. I've been burnt by Foundry and am
> > > waiting to on Arista. ****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> > > blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:****
> > >
> > > Howdy,
> > >                 I have been working on a proposal for the organization I
> > > work for to move into the 10gbit datacenter.  We have a small datacenter
> > > currently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit.  We have traditionally been a
> full
> > > Cisco shop, however I was asked to do a price comparison as well as
> > > features with other major alternative vendors.  I was also asked to do
> some
> > > digging as far as what "the real world" thinks about these possible
> vendors.
> > > We currently have 2 Cisco 6509's with 8 48 port cards Sup 3BXL, 2 Cisco
> > > 4506 with 5x 48 port card and Sup V's and 2 4900M switches providing
> 10gbit
> > > to a very specialized implementation.  With all of our technology, we
> try
> > > to not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge.  We need 5 9's or more of
> uptime
> > > yearly so stability is preferable to cool features.  We currently have
> > > single supervisors in all of our switches (not my decision) and it has
> bit
> > > us recently.  Everything we are looking at needs to support NSF/SSO/VSS
> of
> > > some kind.
> > >
> > > What we have been looking to replace it with in Cisco world is Nexus
> 7004
> > > Core and Nexus 5596UP with 2200 series Fabric extenders for Dist/Access
> as
> > > well as 2200 Fabric Extenders within our Dell Blade Chassis.
>  Realistically
> > > we will be under 800 ports of 10gbit (excluding Blades) which puts us
> in a
> > > tough spot from what I can find.  Currently everything we have is EOR,
> > > however TOR would make more sense allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax
> > > connectivity to servers.
> > >
> > > With this in mind, I have a few questions...
> > >
> > > It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and
> investigate
> > > possible options.  I had not heard much about them, so I look to the
> > > experts.  Pro's and Con's?  Real world experience?  Looks to me they
> have a
> > > lot of cool features, but I'm slightly concerned with how new they might
> > > be, how reliable it would be as well as their QA/bugfix history.  Also
> 24x4
> > > support and hardware replacement.  Everything in our datacenter
> currently
> > > has a 2 or 4 hour cisco contract on it and critical core components
> have a
> > > cold spare in inventory.
> > >
> > > Dell Force 10... I know Dell tries to get you to drink the Koolaid on
> this
> > > solution, I was a former Dell Partner and they even pushed me to get
> demo
> > > equipment going...  What's the experience with their chassis switches?
> > >  Stability?  Configuration sanity?  What do people like?  What do people
> > > hate?
> > >
> > > Juniper.  What do people like? What do people hate?  Have the Layer 2
> > > issues of historical age gone away?  Is the config still xml ish?  It
> has
> > > been about 5 years since I worked with anything Juniper.
> > >
> > > Extreme networks.  I know very little about them historically.  What is
> > > good, what is bad?  Is the config sane?
> > >
> > > I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our
> > > sanitized internal conclusions.  On and off list responses welcome.
> > >
> > > If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to the
> > > list with similarly asked questions.
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > >
> > > Blake****
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ****
> > >
> > > ** **
> > >
> > > -- ****
> > >
> > > Phil Fagan****
> > >
> > > Denver, CO****
> > >
> > > 970-480-7618****
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Phil Fagan
> > Denver, CO
> > 970-480-7618
>
>
>
> --
> 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0



--
Phil Fagan
Denver, CO
970-480-7618


------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:17:51 -0700
From: Brent Jones <brent () brentrjones com>
To: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog () nanog org\)" <nanog () nanog org>
Subject: Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
        Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...
Message-ID:
        <CAOC=LuXYFJJ+xRUSQ50yfYrYtQA5uqBnAvxCB8+gwASpU5s7aw () mail gmail com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:

> Howdy,
>                 I have been working on a proposal for the organization I
> work for to move into the 10gbit datacenter.  We have a small datacenter
> currently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit.  We have traditionally been a full
> Cisco shop, however I was asked to do a price comparison as well as
> features with other major alternative vendors.  I was also asked to do some
> digging as far as what "the real world" thinks about these possible vendors.
>
> We currently have 2 Cisco 6509's with 8 48 port cards Sup 3BXL, 2 Cisco
> 4506 with 5x 48 port card and Sup V's and 2 4900M switches providing 10gbit
> to a very specialized implementation.  With all of our technology, we try
> to not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge.  We need 5 9's or more of uptime
> yearly so stability is preferable to cool features.  We currently have
> single supervisors in all of our switches (not my decision) and it has bit
> us recently.  Everything we are looking at needs to support NSF/SSO/VSS of
> some kind.
>
> What we have been looking to replace it with in Cisco world is Nexus 7004
> Core and Nexus 5596UP with 2200 series Fabric extenders for Dist/Access as
> well as 2200 Fabric Extenders within our Dell Blade Chassis.  Realistically
> we will be under 800 ports of 10gbit (excluding Blades) which puts us in a
> tough spot from what I can find.  Currently everything we have is EOR,
> however TOR would make more sense allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax
> connectivity to servers.
>
> With this in mind, I have a few questions...
>
> It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and investigate
> possible options.  I had not heard much about them, so I look to the
> experts.  Pro's and Con's?  Real world experience?  Looks to me they have a
> lot of cool features, but I'm slightly concerned with how new they might
> be, how reliable it would be as well as their QA/bugfix history.  Also 24x4
> support and hardware replacement.  Everything in our datacenter currently
> has a 2 or 4 hour cisco contract on it and critical core components have a
> cold spare in inventory.
>
> Dell Force 10... I know Dell tries to get you to drink the Koolaid on this
> solution, I was a former Dell Partner and they even pushed me to get demo
> equipment going...  What's the experience with their chassis switches?
>  Stability?  Configuration sanity?  What do people like?  What do people
> hate?
>
> Juniper.  What do people like? What do people hate?  Have the Layer 2
> issues of historical age gone away?  Is the config still xml ish?  It has
> been about 5 years since I worked with anything Juniper.
>
> Extreme networks.  I know very little about them historically.  What is
> good, what is bad?  Is the config sane?
>
> I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our
> sanitized internal conclusions.  On and off list responses welcome.
>
> If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to the
> list with similarly asked questions.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Blake

Coming from first hand experience, all network equipment vendors have
strengths and weaknesses.
Personally, I prefer the Junos CLI and ecosystem, but it is a learning
curve, especially with a larger team who may not be familiar with it.
But I found once I grasped the "Junos way", I'm significantly more
productive with less errors, and "commit confirmed" is much better than
Cisco comparable rollback methods.
Juniper also offers several methods for automation: Junoscript/SLAX,
Netconf, and now Puppet integration.

I also have experience with Force10, and minor experience with Arista, both
good vendors. They will be immieditely familiar to your team, since they
use the same commands mostly.
I find Juniper's virtual chassis to be among the better stacking
technologies, but everyone has their own take. Force10 and Arista do really
good multi-chassis LAG, as well as the Juniper QFX lineup.

These days, vendors are really competitive on pricing and offerings, so you
really can't go wrong  :)

--
Brent Jones
brent () brentrjones com


End of NANOG Digest, Vol 65, Issue 74
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