[127204] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Advice regarding Cisco/Juniper/HP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brandon Kim)
Thu Jun 17 16:53:43 2010
From: Brandon Kim <brandon.kim@brandontek.com>
To: <james@jamesstewartsmith.com>, <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:15:55 -0400
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTik_qczGgmelqHnOoee_SoGnjfEEQ6pIE_B4X95T@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
This situation scares me. It has HP "best interest" written all over it.
You have expertise in competing vendors but not with HP/3Com. They could ve=
ry
well be easy to configure but maybe inferior when you get into the details =
of
how they function. Then if you find out they can't support your business ne=
eds=2C
it would cost even more to replace them. I don't think that's going to happ=
en=2C
I'm sure the people writing the checks will tell you to make it work=2C but=
if it can't
meet the demands=2C it's going to hurt your business...=20
The people writing the checks need to know this. I'm not against new compan=
ies
competing with Cisco/Juniper but at the same time=2C you don't want to be t=
he guinea pigs
for them....
> Date: Thu=2C 17 Jun 2010 09:52:13 -0400
> Subject: Advice regarding Cisco/Juniper/HP
> From: james@jamesstewartsmith.com
> To: nanog@nanog.org
>=20
> I'm looking for a little insight regarding an infrastructure purchase my
> company is considering. We are a carrier=2C and we're in the process of
> building a DR site. Our existing production site is all Cisco equipment
> with a little Juniper thrown into the mix. I'd like to either get the sa=
me
> Cisco equipment for the DR=2C or the equivalent Juniper equipment. We ha=
ve
> skill sets for both Cisco and Juniper=2C so neither would be a problem to
> manage.
>=20
> A business issue has come up since we have a large number of HP servers f=
or
> Unix and Wintel. With HP's recent acquisition of 3Com they are pressing
> hard to quote on the networking hardware as well=2C going as far as offer=
ing
> prices that are way below the equivalent Cisco and Juniper models. In
> addition they're saying they'll cut us deals on the HP servers for the DR
> site to help with the decision to go for HP Networking. Obviously to the
> people writing the cheques this carries a lot of weight.
>=20
> >From a technical point of view=2C I have never worked in a shop that use=
d HP
> or 3Com for the infrastructure. Dot-com's=2C telco's=2C bank's=2C hostin=
g
> companies...I haven't seen any of them using 3com or HP. Additionally=2C=
I'm
> not fond of having to deal with a third set of equipment. I'm not exactl=
y
> comfortable going with HP=2C but I'd like some data to help resolve the
> debate.
>=20
> So my questions to the NANOG community are: Would you recommend HP over
> Cisco or Juniper? How is HP's functionality and performance compared to
> Cisco or Juniper? Does anyone have any HP networking experiences they ca=
n
> share=2C good or bad?
=
