[127220] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Advice regarding Cisco/Juniper/HP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Whynott)
Thu Jun 17 16:56:13 2010
From: Greg Whynott <Greg.Whynott@oicr.on.ca>
To: Tom Ammon <tom.ammon@utah.edu>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:21:46 -0400
In-Reply-To: <4C1A51BE.7090905@utah.edu>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Haven't seen these same issues either, but have seen others..
We use HP 8212's here to connect our storage and hpc devices. each 8212 h=
as about 20 or more 10Gbit connections. Everyone is happy with them from =
an availability and performance perspective. Two things which I noticed, =
1. Under heavy load (60% or more of 10Gbit interfaces at +80%) we have see=
n _all_ interfaces simultaneously drop packets and generate interface erro=
rs. this was on an early release of the firmware and I don't think we hav=
e seen this problem in awhile. 2. each module only has about 28 Gbits of b=
andwidth to the backplane. this means if you want non blocking 10Gbit acce=
ss to the backplan you can only load up an 8212 50% of its physical port ca=
pacity with active links. =20
Very recently they changed licensing, the 8212's use to ship with premium =
licenses included. this gave you OSPF, PIM VRRP and QinQ. without a pro=
duct number change or other clear indication, these no longer are included=
but must be purchased separately. This was a bit of a let down as we use=
OSPF internally and was one of the items that made the 8212's interesting =
when deciding what we would standardize on for access switches. =20
We also use 6509e's for our core routers, they use to be the only routers=
till we deployed OSPF. On the internet edge we use ASRs.
The 'H3C' switches they recently acquired look nice(r).
-g
On Jun 17, 2010, at 12:47 PM, Tom Ammon wrote:
> We've had a much different experience than what Tom is describing here.=20
> We've used HP extensively in our networks, mostly because of the price=20
> and warranty. For simple, flat networks, they are a great buy, in my=20
> opinion. We've never seen the packet loss issues that were described,=20
> and we push quite a bit of data through the 5412, 2900, and 6600 series=20
> products.
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> That said, we've never used them for much outside of basic layer 2=20
> services. We have a couple of c6500s for our core network, but at the=20
> edge, we have been very happy with HP. So far, warranty service has been=
=20
> flawless, although we have only replaced maybe half a dozen switches out=
=20
> of about 70 total that we have installed, over the course of 5 years.
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> There isn't much as far as advanced features (for example, don't expect=20
> to get MPLS or BGP), but since we don't use those features at the edge,=20
> we haven't been hurt by that.
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> Tom
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> On 06/17/2010 10:37 AM, Tom wrote:
>> On Thu, 17 Jun 2010, James Smith wrote:
>>=20
>>> So my questions to the NANOG community are: Would you recommend HP over
>>> Cisco or Juniper?
>>>=20
>> Pretty much never, unless you're talking about a rebadged Brocade produc=
t.
>> Every time I've seen HP networking gear in production, its usually befor=
e
>> it gets replaced with something else. The last install I dealt with was
>> having so many problems it had a constant %10 packetloss on a simple fla=
t
>> network.
>>=20
>>=20
>>> How is HP's functionality and performance compared to Cisco or Juniper?
>>>=20
>> Typically poor, but this varies widely with the series of HP gear.
>> The software updates available also vary widely in quality, and I have
>> rarely gotten a good answer from HP support on anything.
>>=20
>>=20
>>> Does anyone have any HP networking experiences they can share, good or
>>> bad?
>>>=20
>> To end on a positive note, HP does have a good warranty, is typically
>> fairly low cost and provides free software updates.
>>=20
>> -Tom
>>=20
>>=20
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> --=20
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Tom Ammon
> Network Engineer
> Office: 801.587.0976
> Mobile: 801.674.9273
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> Center for High Performance Computing
> University of Utah
> http://www.chpc.utah.edu
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